


The Bucket Knights

by INMH



Series: hc_bingo fanfiction fills 2020 [27]
Category: Rule of Rose (Video Game), The Order: 1886
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Blood and Gore, Bullying, Child Death, Dark, Disturbing Themes, Drama, Gen, Ghosts, Horror, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Monsters, Past Child Abuse, Past Sexual Abuse, Post-Canon, Sexual Abuse, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Supernatural Elements, Tragedy, Trauma, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 08:01:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25910047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/INMH/pseuds/INMH
Summary: AU for both Rule of Rose and The Order. The real Bucket Knights have come to save them, but it’s mostly too late.
Series: hc_bingo fanfiction fills 2020 [27]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1789369
Kudos: 7





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Worth mentioning:
> 
> Rule of Rose is/was a game of many subtleties. There are things implied in the game, or things that are up to interpretation, and the game-makers have allowed for a lot of mystery and open-ended situations. As a result, there are a lot of fan-theories about things that happened in this game, as well as a lot of logical conclusions based on the evidence given. Part of this is due to the fact that Jennifer, the protagonist, viewed the events of the game through a child's lens and is not a 100% reliable narrator.
> 
> In the interest of viewing/discussing this events from the perspective of an outsider/outsiders, I have made certain theories and interpretations of canon concrete in this story.
> 
> Point being, if you see things in this story and are like, "Wait, I played/saw that game a long time ago and I don't remember that happening/being stated", you're probably right because this is just mine (and some others') interpretation of canon.

There was a Lycan in Cardington.  
  
“A _suspected_ Lycan in Cardington,” Alastair corrected pointedly as the carriage rattled down the road. “There is no confirmed sighting. Thus far, there have been reports of missing children- I must emphasize that they are missing, because no bodies have been found yet. As we know, Lycans tend not to be so picky about who they attack, nor are they terribly diligent about cleaning up after themselves.”  
  
“Unless the children are more accessible than the adults,” Sebastien remarked gravely. “In an area like this, a child walking home can easily be snatched- and there are plenty of spots to leave what remains of the victim someplace where they might not be found so quickly.”  
  
Grayson turned to the window, pushing the curtain aside to get a better look: Night had just fallen, and so the countryside was turning into a blur of dark forest and flashes of homes and buildings tucked back behind the tree-line; it had just stopped raining, and what little light remained caused the moisture to glint in the darkness. Yes, a Lycan could very easily prowl through the trees unseen: And there were absolutely places in that dark wood that a small body- or bodies- could be tucked away. Grayson pictured small, broken bodies lying lifeless in the underbrush and shivered.  
  
“There were a number of reports made by a Martha Carol, who works as a housekeeper at a local orphanage. She mentioned a local man prowling around and behaving strangely with one of the girls at the orphanage.”  
  
“Strangely how?” Sebastien’s voice had a somewhat dreadful edge to it; no one said it out loud, but when a grown man was said to be behaving ‘strangely’ around a child, it tended to imply something dark and horrific.  
  
“Well…” Alastair pulled a piece of paper from his coat pocket, unfolded it, squinted for a moment as his eyes adjusted to the dim light of the carriage, and then said, “The man in question was down on all fours, behaving in a dog-like manner as the child, a girl, gave him instructions that Ms. Carol could not hear.” He glanced around at them, an eyebrow quirked to indicate his discomfort and disbelief.  
  
“…‘Strange’ seems an insufficient word,” Lafayette remarked, eyes wide.  
  
“Is that all that was related, or was there more?” Isabeau asked.  
  
Alastair shook his head. “According to the police the fellow’s a local man, and most every other correspondence indicated that he was sneaking around the orphanage and speaking to at least a few of the children- not a crime, of course, but when local children are going missing…”  
  
“…The natural conclusions must be drawn,” Sebastien said, eyes dark.  
  
“But why would he be on all fours playing a dog for a child that he means to snatch?” Isabeau asked, looking bewildered.  
  
“He could be grooming her,” Grayson said. “Gaining her trust- and possibly that of her fellows- so that they might be more likely to follow him somewhere private later on. It’s not so uncommon for someone who means to take a child.” He remembered his own childhood, after he’d been orphaned and before Sebastien had found him: The streets were not kind to young children, even to ones with parents to go home to, and there had always been terrible men and women willing to pluck a child and sell them as slave labor, or to a brothel.  
  
No, it would not be the first time Grayson had heard of an adult luring a child in with kindness.  
  
Eventually, the carriage came to a stop, and the Knights dismounted. Sebastien went to speak with the driver, and Grayson’s eyes fell to the sign hammered into the ground near a sheltered pathway nearby: **ROSE GARDEN ORPHANAGE.**  
  
The children of the orphanage, Grayson considered, were probably asleep by now. It had been many, many years since he had been a child himself- a fellow orphan, no less- but the arrival of strangers in official and formal garb would have been enough to rouse him from sleep as a child. If they were invited in, Grayson wondered if he would hear curious children whispering about the arrival of the Knights.  
  
“The driver will wait for us,” Sebastien said as the carriage pulled up and away, off to the side of the road but still nearby. “We will hear Ms. Carol’s story and any additional information she has on the matter, and then determine whether or not a wider investigation of the grounds are necessary.”  
  
They started up the path, Sebastien up front and Grayson bringing up the rear. “It is _très étrange_ , is it not, my friend?” The Marquis remarked quietly as they began their trek. “After the noise of the city, the silence of the countryside becomes almost oppressive and threatening.”  
  
“I suspect it would be less so if we were here on other business,” Grayson agreed, eyes periodically flickering to the thick covering of trees and bushes that lined the path. He would like to think that they would hear a Lycan- or anything else that might pose a threat- if it were nearby, but all too often half-breeds had proven to be a deceptively silent bunch. Good men and women had been lost over the years because of a light-footed Lycan that had gone unnoticed until the last, tragic second.  
  
It was an unseasonably warm December. Though it was very nearly Christmas, there had been no snowfall yet; the rain from earlier in the day had left the path muddy, and Grayson was hyperaware of every slapping sound their feet made in the muck as they continued on towards the still-unseen orphanage- not even the roof was visible yet, implying that it was either very small, or the forest was very overgrown.  
  
They came to a split in the path. A broken arrow-sign, pointing left, read **ROSE** ; the second half lay at its feet, the wood damp and rotted.  
  
But from the path to their right, a soft yipping sound could be heard.  
  
Without a word, their procession stopped. Isabeau drew her gun. “Is that a Lycan?”  
  
“It sounds more like a dog,” Alastair disagreed, even though his hand had settled on the grip of his pistol.  
  
“I can check,” Grayson volunteered. “A quick look, to ensure nothing’s amiss.”  
  
“I will go too,” Lafayette offered. “If there is danger about, we must know. We go to a place full of children, after all.”  
  
Sebastien nodded slowly. “We will wait here. Signal if there is any danger, and do try to move quickly: We are late enough as it is.” The traffic they had hit from London had been especially brutal, as many were leaving the city to join family in the countryside for Christmas celebrations. Grayson hoped at least that the return trip would be less crowded for them.  
  
He and Lafayette started down the path, the yipping growing louder and louder as they walked. It was not a very long before they came upon a very large, dilapidated shed. Grayson motioned for Lafayette to stand beside the door, and he obeyed; Grayson himself moved to open the door, standing back in the event that anything came running out at them.  
  
Nothing did- but the yipping stopped the moment the door had opened.  
  
Cautiously, Lafayette peeked in. “Dark,” he remarked quietly. “But I see no movement.”  
  
Grayson peered in as well, and then took a step into the shed.  
  
Someone had set up a small tent-like structure using the main support post in the center of the room: A sheet stretched above the ground for cover, while a blanket lay beneath. There were other assorted items in the shed: Shelves, a shovel, a broom, some boxes, bags of-  
  
“ _Jesus!_ ”  
  
Grayson started, hand flying to his gun, and then to his chest. He had first perceived that it was a person standing in the corner, but it was merely a cleverly constructed stick-man with a bucket for a head.  
  
Lafayette giggled, shaking his head. “My friend, I don’t believe that he means you any harm.” He glanced around the room. “But whatever was in here is gone now. There… _Was_ something in here, was there not? It sounded very much like there was a dog in here.”  
  
“It did.” Grayson looked up and down, all around, but could see no dog. Dilapidated though the shed was, Grayson could not see a place where a dog could have wiggled free- especially not so quickly that they would not have seen or heard it leaving through a crack or a hole. He additionally could not explain why the dog would have stopped barking once the door had been opened.  
  
A chill ran down Grayson’s spine.  
  
“Let’s return to the others.”  
  
They had been gone for barely five minutes, but it was obvious that their companions had been anxious for their return. “No dog,” Lafayette reported. “A shed lies at the end of the path, but nothing was inside of it.”  
  
He did not offer up commentary on their shared certainty that something had definitely been making a noise _in that shed_ right up until the door had been opened, and neither did Grayson.  
  
They continued down the path. Grayson kept his eyes on the underbrush, wondering if maybe he might see some excited shepherd or lab come bounding out. If he saw a dog, _any_ dog, he could dismiss the incident at the shed as simple error, mishearing the dog’s location, the dog coincidentally falling silent when the door was opened. If he could only see a simple dog, it would set his mind at ease considerably.  
  
And just for a moment, in the darkness, Grayson did see _something_.  
  
With little pressing, Grayson would say that it was a child: The white shirt and bared legs suggested a boy. He stood silent and motionless between the trees. Grayson realized that the soft sounds of the forest- the wind, the birds, the rustling of squirrels and rabbits- had gone entirely silent.  
  
And the boy did not move.  
  
Grayson opened his mouth, meaning to call out.  
  
“Sir Galahad?”  
  
The procession had stopped again; all were looking back at Grayson with varying levels of concern. And perhaps they were right to be, because Grayson felt as though he’d just been shaken out of a deep sleep. “Huh?”  
  
“Is something wrong?” Sebastien asked.  
  
“I-” Grayson turned back to the woods.  
  
The boy was gone.  
  
“Did you see something?” Isabeau asked.  
  
Grayson stared at her, and then back to the woods. “A trick of the light,” he said quickly, when he realized that he had delayed too long in giving an answer. “Nothing more.” The lingering looks he received suggested doubt, but no one challenged him.  
  
For the better, really; after all, had Grayson not mistaken a few broom-handles and a bucket for a man back in the shed? Lafayette was being kind not to tease Grayson about it, or tell the others.  
  
They moved on.  
  
“Ah, I think I see it,” Sebastien announced. “We’re nearly there.”  
  
And Grayson did see a building rising in the darkness, the faint outline of a stone fence and gate up ahead. There were no lights, however, which gave the dreadful impression that they would be waking the orphanage’s inhabitants, which would surely result in some grumpy and ruffled-  
  
“Sir Perceval,” came Alastair’s sharp exclamation.  
  
“What?” Isabeau asked.  
  
Grayson and Lafayette picked up the pace, coming into line with their fellows to see what it was that had startled Alastair so. It took him a moment as he scanned the land, eyes adjusting to the darkness-  
  
“Oh no,” Lafayette whispered.  
  
The gate to the orphanage was wide open.  
  
And there were bodies all over the courtyard.  
  
_Small_ bodies.  
  
Regardless, Grayson’s first priority was to move towards the only adult he could see: A large, mostly naked man face-down on the brick path leading to the main steps. Though he wore only a pair of thin underwear, he was covered head to toe in blood- and it was obvious that not all of it was his own. Grayson grimaced at the sight, but could at least be grateful that it seemed to have been a clean shot; he’d seen far messier results from a bullet to the head across the centuries.  
  
“This one’s dead, self-inflicted.”  
  
He turned, and saw that Lafayette had lowered his gun and was staring around at the children’s bodies. “ _Mon dieu_ ,” he whispered. “What has been done here?”  
  
Grayson began to count to bodies, mouth stretching into a grim line as the number rose: In the courtyard alone, there were seven dead girls and three dead boys, bloodied corpses scattered across the cobblestones and deadened grass. Following the principle of parsimony, the conclusion was obvious: The dead man had murdered the children, and then killed himself.  
  
Going a step further, Grayson would guess that this was their ‘strange local man’ from the letter.  
  
“Igraine, Lafayette, return to the driver and instruct him to go to the police. Galahad, Lucan, check the children,” Sebastien ordered quietly, slowly kneeling down next to the body nearest to the gate (a pudgy girl with pigtails, no more than ten years-old). “I’m fairly certain they’re all dead, but…”  
  
It went without saying.  
  
The front door of the orphanage was hanging open, a small body half-visible in the gap, and Grayson started towards it. A black-haired girl lay across the stone steps, face-up. Grayson didn’t need to check her: Her eyes were half-open and staring at the sky, unblinking and unmoving. Her throat had been… Cut? Grayson made a face. It looked less like the child’s throat had been cut, and more like it had been gouged out. It bore more resemblance to an animal’s wild mauling than a careful and deliberate murder, but it didn’t seem consistent with a Lycan attack.  
  
_God._ What had that man _done?_  
  
He moved to the door, gently pushing it open and kneeling down to check the body lying in the gap. Grayson was surprised to find a little girl with short, pale blonde hair dressed in-  
  
He shivered violently.  
  
The girl was dressed in a little boy’s shirt and shorts, just as the boy he’d seen in the forest had been.  
  
_She can’t be the one I saw,_ Grayson thought and he looked her over. _Her hair is so light it would have been obvious to me even in the dark._  
  
She didn’t have any visible wounds, only smears of blood that had likely come from the hands and body of her killer, but her pale neck bore spots of blue and brown. Grayson gently pushed his fingers along her spine, and quickly found where the child’s neck had been broken.  
  
Why hadn’t she been mauled like the others?  
  
Suddenly, movement to his left.  
  
Grayson’s head jerked up, and his hand instinctively went for his gun, whipping it from the holster and-  
  
“Christ.”  
  
Grayson couldn’t help it. After one lays eyes on a courtyard full of dead little boys and girls, it is both surprising and miraculous to find a live one staring at you from the safety of a foyer corner.  
  
She was small, no more than eight or nine, her dirty blonde hair cropped short and her white dress stained with blood. There were scratches on her shoulder, back, and face; her eyes were half-shut and unfocused, though whether from trauma or exhaustion was unclear. “Hello,” he said softly, not moving from his place near the door and the blonde girl’s body. “Are you alright?”  
  
Her eyes lifted to meet his. She blinked, looked at Grayson as though he were some unremarkable thing that she saw every day of her life, beyond suspicion or wariness. Her knees were drawn to her chest, arms wrapped around them, but her posture was loose, without panic or fear.  
  
Grayson rose to his feet, stepping carefully over the little blonde girl’s body and into the foyer. She followed his movements as he came to kneel down beside her, but otherwise had no reaction to his presence. “Come,” Grayson said softly, holding out his hands and carefully picking the girl up. “Come, come. Let’s step out.”  
  
Grayson carried her out to the yard, setting her down on the bottom step of the stairs, as far away from the dark-haired girl’s body as he could get her. The girl didn’t seem surprised by the carnage in the yard, regarding it passively, almost as though she wasn’t seeing it. “I have a girl,” He called out, “Alive.”  
  
“I have one over here, too.” Grayson turned, looking into the yard to the left of the main door: Alastair was kneeling next to one of the girls on the grass, obscuring her from view. After a moment Alastair climbed to his feet, her body held to his chest. Long, dark red hair hung from her head, and a darker shade of red stained her dress and pale skin. But she was, undoubtedly, quite alive.  
  
“Diana,” the little girl rasped as she watched Alastair carry her right past them and into the building. “Diana.”  
  
Grayson knelt down again. “Diana? That girl, her name is Diana?”  
  
A slow bob of the head was his answer.  
  
“And yours?”  
  
She didn’t answer. She had turned around and seemed to be especially fixated on the little girl in the boy’s clothes, the one with the halo of pale blonde hair.  
  
“Can you tell me her name?” Grayson asked, reluctant to stir her grief but badly needing her to start talking. The sooner she did, the sooner they would understand what they were dealing with; if there was another threat somewhere on the property, Grayson and the other Knights needed to know.  
  
He had been ready to give up on the question after a moment or two of silence, and then the girl whispered, “Wendy.”  
  
“Her name is Wendy?”  
  
He received the same bob of the head for an answer.  
  
“Can you tell me any other names?”  
  
The girl looked around, scanning the yard with that same disconnected expression. Finally, her head turned to the raven-haired girl on the steps. “Eleanor.”  
  
She raised a hand and pointed to a very small girl a few feet away, off to their left. “Olivia.”  
  
To a boy lying nearby. “Thomas.”  
  
To a boy a little further down the path. “Nicholas.”  
  
Now she pointed to the girl Sebastien had checked first. “Amanda.”  
  
To the girl lying a few feet away. “Susan.”  
  
Now to a girl lying further into the yard on their right. “Meg.”  
  
And then to the boy nearby. “Xavier.”  
  
A pause- and then she lowered her arm, which was starting to shake.  
  
Grayson eyed her, concerned that she might be reaching her limit. None of her bleeding injuries seemed serious, but he couldn’t take for granted that she had injuries he could not see: If she had been hit or kicked or shaken, her head could be spinning and her stomach could be turning and her lungs could be heaving. Whatever the case, it was better not to cause her to overexert herself.  
  
Still, he needed to know.  
  
“And your name, dear?”  
  
A long pause.  
  
“Jennifer,” she whispered. “My name is Jennifer.”  
  
“Is there anyone else, Jennifer? Anyone else we should be looking for, anyone else who lives here?”  
  
She shook her head.  
  
Grayson glanced towards the man’s body- it had not escaped his notice that he was the one name Jennifer had failed to give him. “Is that the man who did this?”  
  
She nodded.  
  
“Do you know his name?”  
  
A pause. “Gregory Wilson.”  
  
A full name: Quite helpful. Even more helpful considering that this implied familiarity, or at least some level of awareness, of her cohorts’ killers. “What happened, child? Do you know why he did this?”  
  
Jennifer was staring at Wilson’s body, unresponsive.  
  
“Jennifer?”  
  
“Stray Dog…”  
  
Grayson frowned. “‘Stray Dog’?”  
  
She began to hum a tune he did not recognize.  
  
“Jennifer, please, who is Stray Dog?”  
  
Abruptly, Jennifer whipped her head towards him, gaze clear and sharp. “I’ll show you.” She stood up and took his hand, pulling Grayson towards the other end of the courtyard. “This way,” Jennifer said. “This way.”  
  
They went through the courtyard and around the side of the orphanage, passing through a rickety wooden gate and past a set of rabbit hutches. Grayson stuttered to a stop halfway down the building when he saw a drawing in chalk scribbled on the wall, one of a vicious looking dog with candy flying from its mouth.  
  
**LEGEND OF STRAY DOG**  
  
**STRAY DOG GIVES US SWEETS**  
  
Grayson shuddered, stomach roiling terribly.  
  
“ _Would you like a sweetie, dear?_ ”  
  
He was a child again: The woman in the doorway in that dark, dark place had looked like something out of a cautionary fairytale about witches and wolves, and so young Grayson had backed away even though he was starving. Stealing food would be easier than escaping an adult that meant him harm, and Grayson had been utterly certain that if he had stepped forward to accept that sweet that he would have been taken and never been seen again.  
  
For a moment, the memory had Grayson shaking in a way that he had not for centuries. The single greatest moment of his life had been when Sebastien had taken him in, saved him from the hunger and terror of being a homeless orphan.  
  
“Sir Galahad!”  
  
Speaking of which: He looked over his shoulder and saw that Sebastien was moving quickly along the path after them. “Where are you going?”  
  
“She has something to show me,” Grayson called back. “Something important.” An extrapolation, perhaps, but Grayson assumed that this girl would not be dragging him through the dark after her fellow orphans had been brutally massacred for no good reason.  
  
“Then I will join you.”  
  
“And leave Sir Lucan?”  
  
“He is tending to the girl he found, and Lafayette and Igraine have returned from the carriage. They will manage in the meantime,” Sebastien supplied as he caught up to them. He cast a brief glance at the chalk scribblings on the wall, frowning, and then back to Grayson and Jennifer. “In any case, this seems…” he glanced back to the drawing. “Of certain importance.”  
  
And so Sebastien joined them.  
  
Jennifer led them out a gate, leaving the property for a path into the woods. Grayson and Sebastien exchanged looks, but made no move to stop her; Sebastien did pull his handgun out, however. After a time it became obvious that Jennifer was struggling to move, but when Grayson offered to carry her she ignored him and simply led him on through the trees, down the path that she seemed so familiar with.  
  
“These are rose bushes,” Sebastien remarked as the path widened, became smoother and better kept. “The orphanage’s namesake, I see. From the amount of them, they must be stunning in the warmer months.”  
  
“They are.” Grayson and Sebastien were both surprised to hear Jennifer speak, with a hint of passion in her otherwise subdued voice. “They’re beautiful, beautiful red roses everywhere, as far as the eye can see.”  
  
“You like roses?” Grayson inquired gently.  
  
A beat. “I did.”  
  
Much like the orphanage, the house just sort of snuck up on them, appearing in its entirety after rounding a broad corner on the path. As with the shed Grayson and Lafayette had searched near the orphanage, the house was in poor shape, water-damaged and run-down. A shame: It was a fair-sized house, a dwelling that could have been stunning if cared for properly.  
  
Jennifer led them through the gate, circling around towards the back of the house. She let go of Grayson’s hand and marched to a small shed in the corner of the yard, throwing it open, disappearing inside, and emerging with a shovel that was far too large for her; she stumbled as she tried to balance it. “Lass, what are you doing?” Sebastien asked, sharing an odd look with Grayson.  
  
But Jennifer didn’t answer them, letting the blade of the shovel drag on the ground as she dragged it behind the house, over towards a barren, half-dead tree. Grayson and Sebastien approached slowly as she awkwardly pulled the shovel around, adjusted her grip, and then began to dig in the cold, stiff earth.  
  
“Jennifer,” Grayson said delicately as the girl’s movements became frantic. “Jennifer, is there something buried here? I can dig if you-”  
  
“ _No!_ ” Jennifer squawked, and Grayson drew back, startled: The word had come out very nearly as a scream, the loudest she had spoken thus far. “No, no, it has to be me. I have to dig them up.”  
  
She resumed digging, and Grayson backed away.  
  
“If she’s not unearthed what she’s looking for within ten minutes, we ought to insist on assisting her,” Sebastien whispered after a few minutes of watching. “She’s liable to hurt herself, and I don’t care to be so far from the others just now.”  
  
“We’ve also no way of knowing how long the moonlight will last,” Grayson muttered, glancing up at the full moon that had started to rise into the night sky. We have no lanterns, and I fear our lights won’t be sufficient to bring us back to the orphanage if the clouds roll in.”  
  
“This house cannot be set too far from the road, surely there must be a path-”  
  
Just then, Jennifer cried out.  
  
She fell to her knees in the dirt and began pawing into the hole she’d created. Chunks of soil flew into the air, and Grayson had to dodge a few as he approached. He looked down into the hole, squinting in the dark- there was definitely _something_ down there, but he couldn’t quite tell what it was. “Jennifer, move aside, I can get it.”  
  
She didn’t seem to hear him, still tearing the dirt out with her bare hands.  
  
So Grayson knelt down and started to help her, pulling back handfuls of dirt and dumping them beside the hole until a shape began to emerge, something made of rough cloth, something _covered_ in a cloth sack, something… Something that was small, and had all the bumps and protrusions of a person beneath a sheet.  
  
Grayson had seen enough in his years to know what a body tucked beneath a shroud looked like.  
  
He quickly withdrew his hands, leaning back. “Perceval, please tell me this isn’t what I think it is.”  
  
Sebastien leaned in, his mouth a tight, grim line. “It looks to be.”  
  
“Are there others? Jennifer, are there others?”  
  
The little girl had finally stopped digging, knees splaying into the dirt. Her hands were shaking, and her gaze had become unfocused. She had started to hum brokenly. Sebastien knelt down beside her, setting a hand on her shoulder. “Jennifer,” he said softly. “Please, we need to know: Are there other children buried here?”  
  
For a moment, she didn’t react.  
  
But then Jennifer looked up at Perceval and began to sing the tune she had been humming before:  
  
“Monday's pea was a sight to see, Tuesday's pea almost made it free, Wednesday's pea didn't think to flee, Stray Dog will have his peas…”  
  
_Peas_ \- plural.  
  
“Good God,” Sebastien whispered. “This is a nightmare.”  
  
Grayson nodded, mute.  
  
“We will have to inform the police.”  
  
Grayson nodded again.  
  
“They should have arrived by now: Let’s return, and once the children are in good hands we might investigate this matter further.”  
  
Grayson took Jennifer’s hand and gently tried to pull her to her feet- she did not, or perhaps could not, get to her feet and walk.  
  
So he carried her back to the orphanage in his arms.


	2. Chapter 2

The walk, which had seemed so long when Jennifer had been leading them before, took less than ten minutes. It seemed that Gregory Wilson had not lived very far from the orphanage at all, its children tragically accessible to him.  
  
When they returned, Lafayette and Isabeau were carrying curtains out from the orphanage and draping them over the dead children. “Where is Sir Lucan?” Sebastien asked.  
  
“Still inside, looking after the other girl,” Isabeau responded. “There’s an infirmary on the upper floor, he managed to patch her up, get her to a better state, but Perceval, he- the man, he-” her voice faltered, cracked, and she lowered it. “-he _bit_ them.” She looked as though she meant to say more, but cast a wary look in Jennifer’s direction and stayed silent.  
  
Sebastien nodded, casting a subtle but significant glance towards Jennifer. “We’ll discuss the implications further later on. What of the police?”  
  
Isabeau frowned. “Lafayette returned from the road but a moment ago, but they’ve still not arrived, nor has our cabbie returned.”  
  
“If you must go to the road again, go in pairs,” Sebastien ordered. “Little Jennifer has led us to another crime-scene, and while our killer may very well be dead, I do not care to find out the hard way what other horrors are lurking about.”  
  
Nearby, Lafayette picked up little Olivia, who could have been no older than three or four, with such a somber gentleness that made Grayson’s chest tighten. Owing to the tricky path that led from the front gate of the Orphanage to the road, they would have to carry the bodies down the path one by one once the police arrived with proper transportation for the bodies. He wrapped her in the curtain and placed her delicately beside the other shrouded children near the gate.  
  
In Grayson’s arms, Jennifer seemed largely unresponsive; but he saw her eyes track Lafayette as he cared for the tiny dead girl, and Grayson thought that he should prevent her from seeing any of the other children being prepared the same way. “Where is the infirmary?”  
  
“First floor: At the top of the stairs take a left, go through the door, and it will be the first door on your right.”  
  
Grayson nodded his thanks, and then started for the house.  
  
“We’ll clean you up,” he assured Jennifer as they climbed the stairs, “And it would be good for you to get some rest before the police come. They will have questions for you about what’s happened tonight.”  
  
Jennifer gave a slight nod, but said nothing.  
  
The infirmary was a small, claustrophobic room. Grayson caught sight of Alastair almost immediately in the adjoining sickroom, which contained a small bed that he was treating young Diana on. In better light, Grayson realized that Diana was clearly one of the older orphans, likely eleven or twelve years-old. Alastair had rolled up her sleeve and was cleaning and bandaging a bloody bite-mark just below her wrist. Diana seemed strangely unresponsive, not even flinching as he dealt with the open wound. She stared up at the ceiling, blinking slowly with clear, blue eyes.  
  
“Sir Lucan,” Grayson called, setting Jennifer down on the narrow examination table. “A word, when you have a chance.”  
  
“I’ll be along presently.”  
  
Grayson took a moment to reexamine Jennifer in the superior lighting: She did seem surprisingly unharmed, mostly bruised and with all lacerations small enough that he didn’t feel they warranted too much attention. How she had managed to survive when the other children had not was surprising- but she had, and it was most fortunate that _any_ had survived the attack at all.  
  
Alastair emerged from the sickroom, rolling down his sleeves. “Galahad,” he greeted, before offering a small smile to Jennifer. “And your companion?”  
  
“Jennifer,” Grayson said. “And this is Sir Lucan.”  
  
Jennifer raised a weary hand. “Diana?” She asked, nodding to the sickroom.  
  
“I’m no doctor, but I think she will be fine,” Alastair assured. “She’s awake, if you would like to see her- Sir Galahad and I must speak.”  
  
Jennifer hopped down from the table without a word and hobbled into the sickroom, leaving the door open as she went.  
  
As such, Grayson was careful to keep his voice low. “How is she?”  
  
“Her arm was dislocated,” Alastair muttered. “I managed to relocate it before she regained consciousness, so I don’t think she felt most of it. She’s bleeding, but I don’t believe any of the wounds are fatal, or even unusually dangerous.”  
  
“Then how did the others die?” Grayson wondered.  
  
“At least three that I saw had their necks broken,” Alastair supplied, lowering his voice even further and leaning in to ensure he would be heard by Grayson and unheard by the girls. “The rest…” He grimaced. “He went for the jugular, Gray.”  
  
_Just like an animal._  
  
Grayson made a face. “Jennifer led us to his house, just a ways through the woods. There are more bodies buried in the yard there, likely the missing children. We’re certain that this man is not- well, that he _wasn’t_ a Lycan?”  
  
“I don’t… _think_ so. The wounds aren’t consistent with a Lycan in any stage of transformation, and- well, I’ve never known a Lycan to bite so many people without just going ahead and transforming, have you? No, I think this was a big, disturbed man facing off against children half his size and strength. I suspect that Diana survived out of sheer, dumb luck- well, and maybe because she was a bit too big and strong to have her neck snapped quite as easily as the other children.”  
  
A good point: Grayson had seen people, adults and children alike, mauled by Lycans before. It wasn’t pretty, and Alastair was correct in that the children would likely have been torn to pieces if their attacker had been anything more than just a madman. In any case, Diana (and Jennifer, for that matter) could have been the last to be attacked, and perhaps the killer’s strength had been waning. “Has she told you anything about what happened?”  
  
Alastair shook his head. “Not really. She asked if she was the only one alive, and I told her that you’d found a girl. She asked for a description and seemed somewhat disappointed with the answer, so I’m not under the impression that she and Jennifer are terribly close. But perhaps I’m being unfair: After all, of- what- ten children, only two have survived, so it follows that she has still lost eight friends even if there’s still one left alive.”  
  
Grayson nodded, and then related his and Sebastien’s trek through the woods with Jennifer, and what they had found in Gregory Wilson’s yard. “So, I believe the odd fellow from the letter is indeed Mr. Wilson, and indeed our culprit,” he concluded. “Jennifer called him ‘Stray Dog’, and it seems to be a sort of… Fairy-tale moniker for the kidnapper they’ve only heard of.”  
  
Alastair sighed deeply. “Curiouser and curiouser.” He sniffed, and then made a face. “Grayson, have you noticed the smell?” He gestured around them with a finger. “Here, in this room?”  
  
Grayson frowned, sniffed; he detected _something,_ but it was very faint. Instead of speaking, he turned and inclined his head slightly towards the girls.  
  
Alastair shook his head. “No, it was here when we came in. And it’s more than just blood, it’s- it’s almost like something died in here.”  
  
Grayson’s eyes widened. “Have you searched for other bodies?”  
  
Alastair shook his head. “No, no, you misunderstand me: It’s not nearly powerful enough of a smell to be a dead person. It smells much more like… Like a dead animal, something small; rotten, but not big or rotten _enough_ to be very easy to detect.”  
  
Grayson was inclined to take him seriously; Alastair was renowned for his excellent sense of smell.  
  
“Where do you think it’s coming from?”  
  
Alastair frowned, crossed his arms, and turned in place. He stopped, facing a set of drawers. “It seems strongest here.” He reached out and opened one of the drawers: It was empty, but Grayson saw dark stains in the old wood.  
  
“Hm, perhaps something was stored here? Or something crawled in and died?”  
  
“Perhaps,” Alastair said as he reached for the uppermost drawer-  
  
“ _Don’t open that!_ ”  
  
Grayson and Alastair whipped back to face the other room. Jennifer was standing in the doorway, staring at them with wide, frightened eyes. “Why not, child?” Alastair asked gently.  
  
“Clara says we’re not to open that drawer,” Jennifer said, voice hoarse and tight.  
  
“Who is Clara?” Grayson didn’t recall her pointing out a Clara in the courtyard.  
  
“One of us.” An orphan, then.  
  
“Is she dead?”  
  
Jennifer was silent.  
  
“Where is she?”  
  
Silence.  
  
“Hoffman’s room.” This was a new voice, Diana’s voice, a flat statement thrown into the air without care.  
  
Grayson and Alastair abandoned the question of the drawer for now and stepped back into the sickroom, Jennifer moving aside to let them pass. Diana was sitting up on the side of the bed, and the stark contrast between herself and Jennifer was somewhat startling: Where Jennifer seemed traumatized and fragile, Diana radiated a certain sense of sharp coldness.  
  
“Hoffman?” Alastair repeated.  
  
“At the bottom of the stairs, take a left and go through the door. Once you have, it will be the first door on your right.” Diana’s icy gaze flicked to Jennifer. “Give them the master key.”  
  
Jennifer stared at her blankly.  
  
Diana let out a long sigh, one that had an edge of a growl to it. “The key I gave you earlier, when-” Her eyes cut briefly, warily, to Grayson and Alastair. “-when you replaced Wendy. You stuck it in your pocket before we went downstairs. Go on and _give it to them_ , Jennifer.”  
  
Jennifer’s eyes stayed locked on Diana, but her hand went to her pocket and pulled out the master key.  
  
Grayson had the distinct sense that Diana was speaking vaguely in his and Alastair’s presence so as to keep the nature of their earlier activities secret. Whether those activities were of a mischievous, childish nature or a more serious one remained to be seen; Grayson did not often interact with children, but he’d known enough of them in his long life to know that they often lacked perspective about the seriousness of their misbehavior. A child might be terrified of telling a police officer that they’d stolen a cookie from the cookie jar, not even a little aware that an officer had far better things to be concerned about than cookies because to a child’s black-and-white mind theft was theft, whether it was a cookie or a wallet.  
  
It was frustrating, and a potential obstacle that he would have to be mindful of, but for now Grayson would take the coded language if it meant getting _some_ answers. “The key will let me into the Headmaster’s room?”  
  
“It’s a skeleton key,” Diana replied. “It should let you in anywhere in this house.”  
  
Grayson met Alastair’s eyes, and his fellow Knight offered him a nod. “I’ll stay here until you return.” The ‘be careful’ went unspoken.  
  
As he went downstairs, Grayson kept his gun out to be safe- the orphanage was a sizeable building, and anyone or anything could be hiding in its depths unbeknownst to the girls. It occurred to him only once he’d taken the left at the bottom of the staircase that the instructions he’d received from Diana were very nearly identical to the ones Isabeau had given him before, only for the ground floor. As it happened, the Headmaster’s room was directly below the infirmary, which should be helpful: If he ran into trouble, Alastair was right above him.  
  
Grayson unlocked the door and stepped into the room. It was dark, only the faint light of the moon outlining some furniture near the window. He edged into the room and found a lamp, clicking it on; he was both relieved and confused to find the room empty of anyone. It was a simple bedroom, with a desk and a bed and a bookshelf. “Clara?” He called softly, receiving no response.  
  
A faint and unpleasant odor reached Grayson. He looked under the bed, and saw nothing; there were no other places in the room to hide. Except, of course, for the door in the back corner, which he presumed was a closet.  
  
Grayson stepped towards the door, keeping his gun out as he pulled it open to reveal-  
  
“ _God!_ ”  
  
-a girl, hanging by the neck from a rope attached to one of the shelves.  
  
Grayson dropped the gun and rushed forward, throwing an arm around the girl’s waist and lifting her up, whilst quickly using the other to pull out his knife and cut the rope around her neck. The full weight of her- which wasn’t much- fell into his arms, and Grayson deposited her onto the bed. He intended to hesitate only a moment, to assess her before attempting any resuscitation efforts…  
  
…But then saw that it was useless: This girl, who had to be Clara, had been dead for at least a week.  
  
With the body so close, and with the closet door open, Grayson was finally assaulted with the full smell of her decaying body- though frankly, it was a miracle that she had not decomposed further than this, probably because of the cold December weather. Indeed the smell was strange, not quite decomposition, but… If Grayson had to name it, it almost smelled like rotting fish.  
  
Something caught his eye, a flash of reddened skin where her blouse had pulled up to reveal a bit of skin.  
  
It could have been a bruise, or an injury received during the suicide. Under different circumstances, Grayson would never have looked at parts of a young lady’s body that were not already unclothed, alive or dead. But given the bizarre events of the day and the many unanswered questions he still possessed, he felt compelled to investigate.  
  
“My deepest apologies, Clara,” Grayson murmured, eyes fixed briefly on her unmoving, slack expression. "I mean no offense."  
  
He received no response (obviously), and so he carefully pulled her blouse up, just enough to see her stomach and ribcage, no more than that-  
  
Grayson made a choked sound, horrified.  
  
The girl had cuts along her ribs, ones that had become scars, and ones that were fairly recent from the reddened, weeping, unhealed skin. The cuts were horrendous, but they were also done in fairly neat lines. So either this girl had been subjected to a truly terrible sort of torture, or she had, for some reason, been inclined to inflict such harm onto herself.  
  
Grayson replaced the blouse, nauseous, and turned away.  
  
A book was open on the desk nearby. He turned on this lamp as well, grateful for the light, and examined it; it was open to the last entry, written in what seemed to be a shaky hand:  
  
_I'm leaving the orphanage. Clara's here to look after things, and the children are quickly growing up. I've done right and fulfilled my duty. Bloody hell! All the trouble started when that wretched child arrived… I've done nothing to deserve this!_  
  
Grayson’s nose wrinkled.  
  
This, he assumed, must be the Headmaster’s diary. But what, precisely, had Hoffman not ‘deserved’? What had been happening that had caused him to abandon the children- who were all clearly years away from reaching the age of majority- in his care? Clara herself could be no older than sixteen, by Grayson’s reckoning. How could the man justify leaving her _indefinitely_ in charge of a dozen or so children that were rightfully _his_ responsibility?  
  
Maybe that was why she had hung herself: Perhaps the pressure had been too much.  
  
But then, what about Martha Carol? What about the woman who had written those letters to the police, concerned about Gregory Wilson’s behavior around the children?  
  
_And what about the cuts?_  
  
Grayson would have to tell Sebastien and the others about Clara.  
  
But first, he wanted answers from Diana.  
  
Grayson returned to the infirmary, where Alastair had began disinfecting some of Jennifer’s cuts. The Knight Commander opened his mouth, like he’d been about to inquire on Clara’s whereabouts, but evidently he got the gist of the situation from the expression on Grayson’s face and let it be. Grayson passed by and entered the sickroom, standing beside the bed.  
  
At first, Diana didn’t move: She was sitting up in the bed, but her head was bowed and her eyes were shut. Then she cracked an eye, opening both fully when she saw who was beside her. “Yes?”  
  
“Diana,” Grayson began quietly, solemnly. “Did you know that Clara was dead when you sent me to find her?”  
  
Diana’s gaze flicked to meet his, and held steady. She said nothing, and so Grayson took it as a ‘yes’.  
  
“When did that happen?”  
  
Diana shrugged. Grayson couldn’t tell if she was being obstinate, or if maybe she was simply one of those people that always seemed to have an attitude about them. He thought about asking her about the cuts on Clara’s side, and immediately dismissed it- it was far too gruesome a question for a girl who’d clearly had enough gruesomeness for one evening.  
  
“About when did you last see her alive?”  
  
Diana was quiet for a moment. “…Maybe two weeks ago.”  
  
Grayson did the math: Today was the twentieth of December, fourteen days ago (or so) would put them at the sixth, and Hoffman’s diary entry had been dated the eleventh of November. “Your headmaster has been gone for a month and some days,” He remarked. “Were Clara and Ms. Carol looking after you?”  
  
Diana’s gaze had drifted away, but now it jumped back to meet Grayson’s sharply. “How do you know about Martha?”  
  
“She wrote letters to the police about Mr. Wilson.”  
  
There was a brief flash of recognition- and of hurt, which was quickly quashed. Grayson suspected that Diana was accustomed to hiding her feelings. “Oh. Martha went away after Hoffman.”  
  
“How long after? His diary suggested he left around the eleventh of last month.”  
  
Diana’s eyes narrowed, this time thoughtfully. “No, it was later than that- Martha was gone a few days after him.” She was quiet for a moment, and Grayson didn’t interrupt. “…It might have been… Around the twenty…fifth? Hoffman, I mean. Martha was maybe two days later.”  
  
“And you found Clara dead a week later?”  
  
A beat. “Yes.”  
  
“Did you tell anyone else?”  
  
Diana hesitated, eyes flicking away for a moment. “No. I stole the master key and locked the room. No one would think to go in there anyway- they all just assumed that Clara left.”  
  
Grayson suspected that to be a lie- it was the only time Diana actively failed to meet his eyes as she spoke, and there was a slight waver to her voice when she’d said ‘no’. “Are you certain that no one else knew Clara was dead? Jennifer told me before that there was no one else left in the building for us to find, and-”  
  
“Jennifer’s a baby,” Diana snapped scornfully. “She sees what she wants to see.”  
  
_She sees what she wants to see._  
  
Now, what could she mean by that?  
  
“Diana,” Grayson continued, “Why did you not contact the police? You knew Clara was dead, and that the only other caretakers had disappeared- why not call for help?”  
  
Diana stared at him for a time, eyes still slightly narrowed. “You won’t believe me,” She said finally, still with a bit of scorn in her voice. “No one ever does. And if you do, you’ll think I’m stupid for doing it.”  
  
“I won’t,” Grayson assured gently.  
  
“Yes, you _will_. Grown-ups never understand.”  
  
Grayson supposed he could hardly blame her for such a stance when one of the main adults in her life had packed up and left without warning- it didn’t speak well to Hoffman’s character or his ability to empathize with others. “Diana, I want only to understand what happened here, and part of that lies in understanding how things came to this point. Please, just be honest.”  
  
Diana eyed him with obvious mistrust. But after a moment of silence she said, “Because Wendy told me not to.”  
  
Grayson was momentarily silent, connecting the dots in his head: Wendy had been the little girl dressed as a boy, the second (after Diana) that Jennifer had identified. That Wendy had given Diana instructions- and that Diana had actually followed them- was somewhat perplexing, however, because Wendy could be no older than nine or ten, and Diana no older than eleven or twelve. In his experience, it was the older (and bigger) children that sat at the top of the food chain, not the younger. Diana seemed to radiate a rather dominant energy, striking Grayson as a girl that did not easily take orders. “Why didn’t Wendy want you to tell anyone?”  
  
Diana chewed her lip. She met Grayson’s gaze, then glanced away; she met it again, then glanced away again, almost as though she thought Wendy would burst through the door and chastise her for saying anything. “She wanted it to just be us here.”  
  
“Just the children, without any adults?”  
  
“Yes. She was-” A sharp halt indicated that Diana was editing herself carefully, much as she had before when instructing Jennifer to give Grayson the key. “-she was in charge. The- the head of our group, here.”  
  
“And so if she asked you to do something, you would naturally take it in stride and assume she had a reason for it.”  
  
Diana nodded slowly. “Usually.”  
  
“You said earlier that Jennifer ‘ _replaced_ ’ Wendy. Did you mean that she replaced Wendy as the head of your… ‘Group’?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Why did that happen? Did Wendy do something wrong?”  
  
Something changed in Diana’s expression: Grayson could not tell if she was angry, or if she was on the verge of breaking into tears- or perhaps some combination of both. “She- She-” Diana jerked her head away. “We thought she’d lied to us.”  
  
“You _thought_ she had.”  
  
“We were wrong.”  
  
“What did she-?”  
  
The door to the infirmary opened again, and Grayson quickly stood up. Sebastien entered, thankfully without the appearance of urgency. “Sir Galahad, Sir Lucan- if you could meet me in the hallway for half a minute?”  
  
Grayson looked to Diana. “There will be more questions later,” he said.  
  
“Of course there will,” She grunted.  
  
Grayson and Alastair left the room, left Diana on the bed and Jennifer on the examination table as they stepped into the hall, shutting the door behind them.  
  
“How are the children?” Sebastien asked first.  
  
“They’ll live,” Alastair said, briefly reiterating Diana’s list of injuries. “A proper doctor ought to look them both over, but I’m confident neither of them is in any real danger for now.”  
  
“Good. Has anyone else been found?”  
  
Grayson pulled a face. “There’s a dead girl downstairs, an older girl named Clara. I found her hanging in the Headmaster’s closet- if Diana’s reckoning is right, she’s been dead for a little under two weeks.”  
  
“So she knew the girl was dead when she sent you for her?” Alastair asked, not sounding especially surprised.  
  
“I believe she did.”  
  
“You said she was hanging. Did it appear to be suicide?” Sebastien asked.  
  
Grayson’s grimace deepened. “…It is… it is hard for me to say. She had these strange cuts on her ribs, clean and even cuts, and it’s my tendency to say that they were self-inflicted, but… Sebastien, this is a bizarre situation we find ourselves in. We came looking for Lycans and have come across something far stranger.”  
  
“Of that we can certainly agree.” Sebastien stroked his beard for a moment. “I shall tell Isabeau and Lafayette of the other body, but the police have still not arrived: Our cabbie assured us that he was familiar with this area, and so I cannot believe he doesn’t know where the police are-”  
  
“-unless he was lying,” Alastair supplied. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”  
  
“True, but I grow uneasy. It is nearly ten o’clock, we have ten bodies at the orphanage in need of removal and God knows how many more at the cottage, as well as two very live children that badly need to be brought to safety; we cannot investigate the matter properly until they are secured. They’ve given no indicator that there are any other children alive on the property, have they?”  
  
“Not a one,” Alastair confirmed as Grayson shook his head. “I find it far more likely that we would-”  
  
He stopped mid-sentence, head jerking away to stare down the hall.  
  
“What?” Grayson inquired, following his gaze and seeing nothing.  
  
Alastair was silent for a moment.  
  
“You didn’t hear that?”  
  
“Hear what?”  
  
The Knight Commander held up a hand. “ _Shh_.”  
  
All three men fell silent, listening.  
  
And then, just barely, Grayson heard something that sounded like…  
  
…Whispering.  
  
“Hello?” He called. “Is someone there?”  
  
The whispering grew a little louder.  
  
Alastair’s brow furrowed. “Bright… Crayon?”  
  
The whispering grew louder, and now they could hear it clearly:  
  
“ _A bright red crayon for you,_ ” the voice whispered. “ _A bright red crayon for you…_ ”  
  
“Who’s there?” Sebastien called, pulling his gun from its holster but keeping it down by his side. “Show yourself!”  
  
“It almost sounds like children,” Alastair said, hand on his gun but not pulling it free just yet. “It could just be children.”  
  
He did not sound terribly confident about it, however.  
  
And then, from out of nowhere, an inhuman howl echoed…  
  
…From almost right below them.  
  
“That-” Grayson hesitated, uncertain if he should even say it. “That… Sounded as though it came from the Headmaster’s room.”  
  
Alastair caught his meaning instantly. “Where you left the girl’s body?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Could she still be alive?” Sebastien asked.  
  
Grayson shook his head, swallowing thickly. “Clara was dead. Absolutely, unequivocally dead: She reeked of it.” _Of fish,_ he amended only to himself. _Not of proper death, but of a rotted fish carcass._  
  
“Perhaps we should investigate.”  
  
“We should.” Sebastien opened the door to the infirmary, stepping over the threshold. “Jennifer? We are going downstairs for a moment, and kindly ask that you girls stay here in the meantime.”  
  
There was a muffled response, and then Sebastien shut the door, a wry look on his face. “I believe it was the older of the two girls that said, ‘where precisely does he think we mean to go’?”  
  
“She seems rather dominant,” Grayson agreed. “Her natural state, judging from the way Jennifer is with her.”  
  
“There’s always one.”  
  
Grayson led them downstairs. There were no other noises, no whispers or movements in the shadows. He hesitated before pulling the door open, momentarily uncertain as to what they would be walking into.  
  
_She was dead,_ Grayson told himself firmly. _She was absolutely dead. She was not breathing. She was decaying. She was dead._  
  
Clara was dead.  
  
She was dead, and she was right on the-  
  
“Ah, _fuck._ ”  
  
Clara’s body was gone, and there was a pool of blood and mucous in the middle of the floor.  
  
Grayson rushed into the room, bending quickly to look under the bed- not there. He looked into the closet- not there.  
  
Clara’s body was gone.  
  
“So… The girl was not dead?” Alastair posed uncertainly.  
  
“Or someone moved the body,” Sebastien suggested. “Grayson, you said she ‘reeked’ or death- perhaps Igraine or Lafayette came in, found the body, and moved it.”  
  
“What about the floor?”  
  
“She might have been dropped, or set on the floor.”  
  
This was an entirely reasonable possibility, the most reasonable by far. But Grayson’s spine tingled unpleasantly, and he could not shake the feeling that something was just… _Wrong._  
  
He stared at the dark stain on the floor.  
  
“She’s been dead for over a week,” Grayson whispered.  
  
He looked to Alastair and Sebastien.  
  
“So how could she have bled like this?”  
  
**_BAM._**  
  
The door slammed shut, causing them all to jump.  
  
Alastair went for the door, grabbing the knob and yanking- the door gave way with surprising ease.  
  
“Wait!” Sebastien slung his shotgun off his shoulder, pointing it at the door. He nodded to Alastair, who pulled the door open.  
  
The first indicator that something was off was the light: The hallway they’d passed through to get to the Headmaster’s room had been dark. The second indicator was Sebastien’s expression, which went from totally alert to utterly baffled in a matter of seconds. “What in God’s name…?”  
  
Grayson stepped forward, out into the hall.  
  
“What devilry is this?” He whispered.  
  
The hallway had… Changed.  
  
It no longer resembled the dark, narrow hallway of an orphanage, but the much wider and cavernous hallway of an _airship._ Grayson could feel the rumbling, subtle vibrations of the ship’s machinery working to keep them in the air.  
  
“So I am not the only one seeing this,” Alastair said with a grim air of forced calm. “That’s certainly reassuring.”  
  
“I would rather that you be alone in a hallucination than all of us being trapped in some sort of…” Grayson jerked a hand up, a helpless gesture at their surroundings. “…Mad, dimensional shift?”  
  
“We’ve walked into something I don’t believe I’ve ever seen before,” Sebastien said as he placed a hand on the wall. “Unless we have somehow been drugged, or rendered unconscious, I have no explanation for this: In all my years, I’ve not even seen powerful witchcraft come close to this level of immersion. I can _feel_ the ship moving.”  
  
**_BAM._**  
  
They jumped; the door had, once again, slammed shut behind them.  
  
And then screams- two very human, very _child-like_ screams- came from very nearby.  
  
“The girls!” Alastair cried. “They sound close by, but how can we be sure to find them now?”  
  
Grayson pointed to the ground. “That seems like a good indicator.”  
  
A trail of viscous, mucous-filled blood was spread in a steady, solid smear down the hallway.  
  
It reeked of fish, and led to a door at the other end of the corridor.  
  
They hurried down the hall, Grayson yanking the door open without fanfare and stepping inside.  
  
What was most baffling, naturally, was that the room they had stepped into was _definitely_ the infirmary: It was much bigger and darker than it had been in the orphanage, but in the center was that same narrow examination table, now covered in dark blood and globs of… _viscera_ that made Grayson’s stomach roil. He looked around, but did not see Jennifer or Diana hiding anywhere nearby. Much like the yipping of the dog, he was quite certain that their screams had come from this room.  
  
“ ** _AHHH!_** ”  
  
The guttural howl had come from above their heads this time.  
  
Something dropped from the darkness above, nearly landing on Sebastien.  
  
“ _Good Lord!_ ”  
  
It was Clara.  
  
She was not as Grayson had left her: She hung from the ceiling, suspended by ropes that wrapped around her legs and lower body, the resulting silhouette making her look eerily like a mermaid. The cuts on her ribcage had widened, turning into flaps of skin that looked very much like gills. She was topless, but had no breasts: The skin, it seemed, had been stapled on with something industrial and not built for human flesh. Her eyes were gone, the sockets empty and dark.  
  
Clara had cut a tragic figure in death; now she was monstrous.  
  
The creature let out a horrible howl, followed by a retching, gurgling noise.  
  
“Move!” Alastair’s hand on the back of Grayson’s neck was all that saved him from the wretched bile that exploded from Clara’s mouth. When it hit the floor, the wood sizzled as though it were covered in acid. In the meantime, Sebastien had gotten his shotgun from his back and was taking aim.  
  
**_BOOM._**  
  
The shot caught Clara in the waist, chunks of flesh flying from her rotting body. She wailed again, hacking up more bile that Alastair and Grayson had to lunge to avoid. Then she rose up into the ceiling, hoisted by the rope that entwined around her legs. Grayson realized, stomach sinking, that he couldn’t see the ceiling anymore: Like the hallway, the room had become eerily cavernous.  
  
“Where is she?” Sebastien called, the shotgun aimed up at the ceiling. “Where has she gone?”  
  
They could still hear her: Clara was wailing and howling as though she were in terrible pain, as though she were suffering. _But she’s dead,_ Grayson thought, boxed into a corner, eyes affixed to the darkness above. _She cannot suffer now, she is good and properly dead. She **was** when I checked her._  
  
“ _Grayson!_ ”  
  
Clara dropped down again, right over Grayson’s head.  
  
He was forced to roll out of the way once more, and his hand and arm landed hard on some of the bile-covered floor; even with gloves and a thick jacket on he could feel his skin burning as though stuck right into boiling water.  
  
**_BOOM._**  
  
Grayson ducked out of instinct, and cringed as something wet and undoubtedly disgusting land right on his back.  
  
“ ** _UWAAHHH-_** ”  
  
**_BOOM._**  
  
The scream cut off abruptly, turning into choked, weak gagging.  
  
Grayson lifted his head, daring to look up. Clara was dangling limply from the rope, dripping blood and small hunks of gore. Finally she stopped making any noise at all and, slowly, she rose back up into the darkness above and disappeared.  
  
The lights flickered, and then returned.  
  
In the blink of an eye, the infirmary had returned to normal: Just as it had been when they had been in it earlier, sans the two orphans they had left behind.  
  
“Diana?” Grayson hissed, rising shakily to his feet. “Jennifer? Where are you?”  
  
No response.  
  
Sebastien moved towards the door leading to the sickroom, and it yielded to him without difficulty. “Perhaps-”  
  
A loud shriek sounded, and Grayson saw Sebastien catch something mid-swing.  
  
“Child, _child!_ It’s alright, you’re safe.”  
  
Diana had been standing on the other side of the door, a wooden pole in hand, intending to bash whoever came through. She collapsed, sobbing, into Sebastien’s arms, the pole falling to clatter against the floor. “It was Clara!” She wailed. “She didn’t have eyes anymore! Just black holes!”  
  
“She’s gone,” Sebastien soothed, patting her head. “Whatever that creature was, it’s disappeared now. You are safe.”  
  
“We will be safer once we have left this building,” Alastair insisted. “Which I believe we should do immediately.” He stepped past Sebastien and Diana into the sickroom, and returned leading Jennifer by the hand. There were tear-streaks on her cheeks, but she was otherwise totally silent. One could only imagine how the night’s turmoil was wearing on her young mind: First her fellow orphans were slaughtered before her eyes, and then she was accosted by the mutilated ghost of a dead teen-aged minder.  
  
Once again Grayson went first, gun drawn and looking both ways down the corridor before stepping out of the infirmary. He let the others emerge behind him, Sebastien stepping forward to get the door whilst Alastair and Grayson stayed vigilant, the girls in the center of their trio.  
  
But the knob rattled uselessly. “The door is locked.”  
  
“I’ve got it.” Grayson produced the skeleton key from his pocket and tried it in the lock; he started when it popped right out of the lock, as though someone had mischievously stuck something in from the other side to knock it loose. He tried again, and it happened again, he tried a third time, and yet again-  
  
“Your efforts are admirable, but futile, Grayson,” Alastair sighed, shaking his head. “Girls, is there another way around?”  
  
“I expect they’ll be locked too.” Diana had retreated into the same cold, brittle impassiveness she’d had when she’d first started speaking earlier.  
  
“But who’s locked them?”  
  
Diana shrugged just as Jennifer whispered, “Joshua.”  
  
Grayson sighed, anxiety causing his frustration to spike. “You did not mention a ‘Joshua’ before,” he remarked as gently as he could manage. “Who is Joshua, Jennifer? Another orphan?”  
  
Jennifer shook her head. For a moment, Grayson felt guilty: The expression on her face suggested that she was put off by his subtle anger.  
  
But then he realized that what he was seeing in her eyes was mute fear.  
  
“Joshua Wilson.”  
  
“ _Wilson_ _?_ You mean, like Gregory Wilson?”  
  
Jennifer nodded, eyes wide. “His son.”  
  
“Bollocks,” Diana snapped, to the surprise of the three adults present. “It couldn’t possibly be him.”  
  
“Why not?”  
  
“Well for starters, he’s been dead for three years.”


	3. Chapter 3

Lafayette was desolate.

It was not the first time he had seen a dead child, and it would likely not be the last, but there was no comfort or cure for the pain of preparing tiny bodies to be taken and buried. Isabeau, for all her composure, seemed equally affected in her own way: Her eyes kept darting to the curtain-wrapped bodies, particularly the big one concealing the killer; Lafayette had tucked the pistol they’d found in the man’s hand on his belt for later inspection.

Now it was just the Knights, and their two young survivors, left alive on the property.  
  
“Where is Perceval?” She whispered, quickly whipping her head away and staring off at the house. Sebastien had said that he would retrieve Grayson, Alastair, and the two girls, and that he would return presently- that had been about twenty minutes ago. It was Lafayette’s instinct to go inside and seek them out, but was equally reluctant to leave the bodies of the children unattended. Sebastien had instructed the Knights not to go anywhere alone until they had certainty that any and all possible dangers had been neutralized, so going inside would require bringing Isabeau.  
  
“I am certain they will all belong along shortly,” Lafayette sighed, resolving to be patient for yet a while longer.  
  
Isabeau sighed as well, albeit in a more frustrated way.  
  
The wind blew gently, rustling the trees and grass. _So warm for December in England,_ Lafayette thought. If it weren’t for the handful of leafless trees and scraggly bushes, one might think it was Spring or Fall. At least it made spending time outside a little less unpleasant: The Blackwater protected the Knights against many things, but it did not protect them from the cold or the heat.  
  
Lafayette let his mind drift, eyes wandering across the courtyard, across the bloodstains and the dead grass and the-  
  
-boy?  
  
A little boy, standing by the side gate at the edge of the courtyard!  
  
He could be no older than eight or nine, wearing a white shirt and dark shorts- Strange, he was dressed so similarly to one of the little girls that had been removed, perhaps they were siblings?  
  
“Lady Igraine,” Lafayette whispered, slowly straightening up. “ _Igraine!_ _Regardez!_ ”  
  
“What-” Isabeau turned, and stiffened.  
  
“One of them must have escaped!” Lafayette hissed. Louder he called, “Hello! Are you alright?”  
  
The boy did not move.  
  
Lafayette tried again. “It is alright! The danger has passed, we are-”  
  
The boy turned and darted back through the gate.  
  
Lafayette groaned, slapping a hand to his forehead.  
  
“Well, we _are_ standing beside an accumulation of corpses, Marquis,” Isabeau remarked flatly. “I can hardly blame the boy for running.” She took off across the yard towards the gate.  
  
“Lady Igraine, the bodies-!”  
  
“This boy is alive, Lafayette, we ought to be more concerned about him!” Isabeau called back without stopping.  
  
Of course she was right.  
  
Lafayette ran after Isabeau, who plowed through the gate and down the side of the orphanage. “Boy, _stop!_ We’re not here to hurt you!” He heard her shout. Lafayette could not see the little boy around Isabeau, given how narrow their path currently was, but he did see another gate fly open a ways down the wall.  
  
“ _Non_ , _non,_ please don’t go into the woods!” Lafayette begged, more to himself than to the boy. If the child ran into the woods he would be impossible to find: Adults or not, Lafayette and Isabeau would be woefully unfamiliar with the terrain compared to a child that had been living in the area.  
  
They flew out the back gate, only for Isabeau to come to a stop at the edge of the woods. “Damn it all!” She snapped. “He’s gone. We have no hope of finding him now, not at night.”  
  
Lafayette’s shoulders sagged. “We will simply have to hope that he knows where he’s going, and that it’s safe. He will have to come out eventually, whether it is for us or the police.”   
  
Isabeau adjusted her scarf and shook her head. “Hopefully sooner than later, for his sake if nothing else. Let’s head back, because knowing our luck Perceval has already-”  
  
“ _A bright red crayon for you…_ ”  
  
They both froze.  
  
And again, a child’s voice whispered,  
  
“ _A bright red crayon for you…_ ”  
  
“Boy,” Lafayette called gently, “Please come out, we mean you no harm.”  
  
“ _A bright red crayon for you, a bright red crayon for you…_ ”  
  
“That sounds like more than just one child, Marquis,” Isabeau muttered, taking a step backwards towards Lafayette.  
  
“Yes, yes it does,” he agreed, looking around and not seeing any sign of multiple children lurking nearby, in spite of the fact that the whispers were multiplying and growing louder and louder-

“ _A bright read crayon for **you!**_ ”  
  
Suddenly, Lafayette’s feet had been yanked out from beneath him.  
  
Isabeau cried out in alarm, and he heard her hit the ground as well. “ _Lafayette_ _!_ ”  
  
“ _Igraine!_ ” He saw a flash of her being dragged away from him, back towards the orphanage- just as whatever had taken a hold of him began pulling him in the opposite direction, towards the forest.  
  
Whatever had him, it moved _fast._  
  
Lafayette tried to straighten up, tried to resist and yank his legs free, but it was no use: he couldn’t coordinate his limbs well enough to grab his knife, or fight back against his attackers.  
  
Abruptly, there was nothing beneath Lafayette- he had been pulled off a ledge of some sort.  
  
The last thing he saw before his head struck the ground was two tiny, hunched figures hauling him across the forest floor.  
  
[---]  
  
Isabeau was about as effective in shaking off her attackers.  
  
They pulled her into the orphanage, and she did manage to delay them for a moment or two as she grasped onto the doorframe, engaged in a momentary game of tug-of-war as she tried to leverage herself free. But a broom struck her fingers, startling her and breaking her grip, and Isabeau was once again pulled along against her will.  
  
And then she was outside again.  
  
Walls, high walls were all around her- an inner courtyard of some kind. She began to slow, and Isabeau tried to dig her fingers into the dirt, to gain back some measure of control.  
  
Two small figures rose up: Twisted little monsters in black smocks, with gaping mouths and dark holes for eyes. They kept pulling until Isabeau yelped, dropping from the yard into a lower space, something wooden and-  
  
-a _box_.  
  
Isabeau realized what was happening just as the lid slammed down onto the box, trapping her inside. She let out a cry, pushing up against the lid and finding it damnably unmovable. “Let me out!” Isabeau roared. “ _Let- me- **OUT!**_ ”  
 _  
They’re going to bury me,_ she thought, heart pounding. What other reason would they have for shoving her into a box already half-buried in a courtyard? For all she knew the area they had brought her to was a cemetery. _They’re going to bury me alive, I’m going to suffocate in here._  
  
“Lafayette!” Isabeau screamed, banging her fists wildly on the lid of the box. “Perceval! _Grayson! Alastair!_ ”  
 _  
Don’t panic,_ she thought, even as her chest heaved frantically. _Don’t panic. You’ll lose air faster._ Or maybe not: The box was not airtight, and moonlight streamed in through the cracks in the lid.  
  
The box shuddered- it was being lifted.  
  
The light in the box shifted- it was being moved.  
  
Isabeau thrashed and screamed as she was carried off. Eventually the light disappeared, and everything turned black.  
  
Later, Isabeau would suppose that she had fallen unconscious, because it was the simplest possible explanation.  
  
(The second most likely was that she’d lost some of her memory.  
  
The third was that she’d gone temporarily mad.)  
  
It felt like only a moment or two that the darkness lasted, but it was immediately obvious upon waking that Isabeau had been unconscious for far longer than that. She wasn’t in the box anymore: Now she was tied to a pole of some sort, with a bag over her head. A quick test of her bindings showed them to be worryingly strong.  
  
“Hello?” Isabeau ventured, her voice hoarse. “Is anyone there?”  
  
Silence.  
  
Through the hood- which could be no more than a simple cloth sack- she could tell that she was in a relatively small room lit by two small lanterns. She could see the outlines of various objects around the room, but nothing to suggest that she had company. That was a relief, at least: Isabeau would be free to make escape attempts without being stopped by a watcher.  
  
 _Where have they brought me?_ Isabeau wondered as she twisted her wrists, wriggled her hips to try and slip free. Was she still in the orphanage, or on the grounds somewhere? Had she been brought to the other crime-scene Sebastien had mentioned, the killer’s house? Isabeau did her best to pay attention to what she _could_ sense for now, and the only hint she could divine was a soft vibration beneath her, as though she were in a vehicle of some sort, or perhaps in a room situated above or around some machinery.  
  
More importantly, who on earth had managed to snatch not just her, but Lafayette as well? Isabeau recalled the foul little ghouls and their twisted features as though from a nightmare, and questioned herself: Had they simply been people in masks- _children_ in masks? No: A child that small wouldn’t have had the strength to drag an unwilling adult for as far as they had dragged her.  
  
But then, what had those creatures been? Why had they taken her?  
 _  
And what did that boy have to do with it?_  
  
It couldn’t have been mere coincidence that that little boy had disappeared right before Isabeau and Lafayette had been taken. Her suspicious mind would even go so far as to say that the sneaky little wretch had led them right into a trap.  
  
It took what felt like an hour to wriggle free of the ropes bit by bit. Years and years before, Grayson had taught Isabeau and a few other Knights how to escape several sorts of bindings, from ropes to handcuffs. “You’ll thank me on the day that you can slip out of a prison without being detected,” Grayson had remarked when Gaheris had cursed him out fifteen minutes into the exercise.  
  
Still, whoever (or whatever) had tied Isabeau up had done a decent enough job of it that, for a time, she grew concerned that escape would be impossible: But finally she managed to get her wrists free, and from there it was easy to loosen the rest of the ropes and slip entirely free.  
  
“Thank _God_ ,” She gasped, crawling away on her hands and knees. Isabeau saw now that it had been a strange metal post in the center of the room that she had been tied to. The room itself was of medium size, but the insufficient light from the lanterns cast shadows on the walls that made the room seem smaller and more claustrophobic than it actually was. There was a set of shelves covered in laundry baskets, a crudely constructed stick-figure with a bucket for a helmet, and a waste-bin by the door-  
 _  
A door!_  
  
Isabeau scrambled to her feet and headed for the door-  
 _  
WAIT!_  
  
It was Grayson’s voice in her head that gave her pause. Isabeau had a tendency to rush, and this often led to her to forgetting things- like arming herself before heading out of a strange room in an unfamiliar place. A quick pat-down assured Isabeau that her attackers hadn’t disarmed her, which was a blessing: At least the weapons gave her some degree of defense against anything else that might try to drag her off into the darkness and throw her into a box again.  
  
She shuddered a little as she remembered the box, so certain that she had been on the verge of being buried alive.  
 _  
Not again._  
  
She would watch her feet this time, make sure that there were no more surprises.  
  
Isabeau opened the door, carefully peeking out. To her right, the hallway was a dead-end with no other doors. But to her left…  
  
She crept out of the room and down the hall, to the main corridor. The paths to the left and right ended in doorways, but straight ahead of her was a vast, open space: Isabeau was in some sort of structure, a building of some kind that was massive and cavernous. Between this and the perpetual, gentle vibration beneath her feet…  
  
“…An airship?” She whispered.  
  
That couldn’t be right- but wait, no, hadn’t Alastair mentioned earlier that an airship had taken off on its maiden voyage from a station just outside of Cardington last year? It had crashed not an hour after taking off, and there had been no departures since, but maybe they still had airships docked at the port?  
  
But how had her attackers gotten her all the way to the port without being seen?  
  
Isabeau rolled her shoulders, chilled and uneasy; she had the most uncomfortable feeling that she was being watched.  
  
“Questions later,” She whispered to herself, glancing over her shoulder, up and down and all around, and finding nothing. “Now’s the time for action.”  
  
Isabeau pulled out her rifle, looked both ways down the corridor, and then trotted off to the left to find Lafayette.


	4. Chapter 4

They heard the shouts from inside the house.  
  
“Damn it!” Grayson hissed, giving up on the knob and just throwing himself at the door, ramming it with his shoulder. It didn’t budge; he tried again, and then a third time, a fourth time-  
  
“Igraine, Lafayette, come in.” Sebastien tried his communicator, but all he received in response was static. Alastair’s results were similar, and so Grayson didn’t even bother- he kept right on ramming the door even though it was becoming painfully obvious that it was achieving absolutely _nothing-_  
  
Suddenly, the hallway grew even darker than it had been before.  
  
“ _A bright red crayon for you,_ ” came the whisper. “ _A bright red crayon for you…_ ”  
  
Jennifer gasped, grabbing Diana’s hand and huddling near Alastair. “Imps, Imps!” She whimpered.  
  
“Imps? What Imps?” Sebastien demanded.  
  
“Some foolishness, she thinks there are little monsters living in the orphanage,” Diana said, but even she was looking around nervously now and made no attempt to push Jennifer away.  
  
“What do they look like?”  
  
“ _AHH!_ ” Sebastien was suddenly being lifted into the air; almost immediately afterwards, something caught around Grayson’s ankle and yanked him clean off of his feet. He slammed against the ground, air flying from his lungs. Something dragged him with remarkable strength, and Grayson just managed to lift his head, and at the end of the rope that dragged him now was a small, grey-skinned creature in a black smock. Like the Clara-Mermaid monster, its eyes were dark black pits, mismatched in size; its mouth was a wide, gaping hole.  
  
Grayson’s hand flew to the gun on his hip, unencumbered. He pulled it loose, cocked, and aimed.  
  
**_BANG._**  
  
Black-red blood explodes from the Imp’s head. Grayson scrambles back, ripping the rope from his foot and hurrying to his feet. He turned just in time to see Alastair cutting through the rope that had been looped around Sebastien’s neck; Grayson found the Imp in the dim hall and took a shot, dropping it quickly and easily.  
  
“ ** _EYAHH!_** ”  
  
Something tackled him from behind. Grayson crashed to the ground, roaring in pain as sharp teeth sank through his jacket and into his shoulder. “ _AH!_ ”  
  
The teeth were torn from his shoulder, the weight on his back relieved- judging from the thud and wet smacking sound that ensued, Alastair had been kind enough to whip the creature against the wall. Grayson worked his bottle of Blackwater from under his collar and took a sip, clenching his teeth as the wound in his shoulder began to knit back together. “Perceval, Lucan! Are you alright?”  
  
“Fine, they didn’t get me,” Alastair assured. “Perceval?”  
  
“I’ll live,” Sebastien rasped, rubbing his throat as he climbed to his feet. “Are the little beasts dead?”  
  
“And then some,” Grayson replied, rising to his feet and kicking the corpse of the withered little Imp he’d shot with more force than necessary. “I suppose we can safely say that it wasn’t just some foolishness on Jennifer’s- hang on, where have the girls gone?”  
  
They looked around, and saw that Diana and Jennifer were gone.  
  
“Jennifer? Diana?” Alastair called. “Are you still here?”  
  
No response.  
  
“I didn’t hear them screaming,” Grayson said, looking at the ground for traces of blood and finding none. “I like to think they ran instead of being taken.” Perhaps the Imps had been too busy managing the Knights to be concerned about two little girls.  
  
“I should hope so,” Sebastien intoned gravely, holstering his gun and keeping his knife in hand. “Else the situation has become far more dire. They cannot defend themselves against these creatures, especially in the state they’re in.”  
  
True: Diana had been hobbling along at her own insistence, and though Jennifer was in a slightly better physical state, she was smaller and weaker. Altogether, their odds of survival without protection were slim, even against the relatively small enemies that had just attacked them. “We need to find them, quickly.”  
  
- _click._  
  
They turned around- the door that had previously been locked was now open ever-so-slightly.  
  
The three Knights exchanged silent, moody gazes, and then went for the door.  
  
“Oh, not _again_ ,” Alastair growled once they’d stepped through the door.  
  
Once more, the landscape had shifted: They stood not in the hallway of a house, but instead a plush, carpeted hallway with sleek, mahogany paneling on the walls. “This is most definitely not the hallway we passed through to get here,” Grayson sighed, shaking his head.  
  
“Well, in that case-”  
  
Sebastien turned to grab the doorknob, but- right on cue- it slammed shut and locked of its own accord. The senior Knight threw his hands into the air.  
  
“Or not,” he snapped.  
  
With no other choice, they started down the hall. “This looks like the same hallway as before,” Grayson said softly as they moved down the narrow hall. “Sans the blood all over the floor, of course. But if I had to guess, we seem to be amongst the passenger lodgings.”  
  
“Luxury passenger lodgings, judging from the décor,” Alastair agreed.  
  
They reached an open space, a main room from which the different hallways diverged. To their right was a long hallway ending in a door, with some sort of box affixed to it; Grayson meant to draw attention to it, but Alastair called out first:  
  
“Have a look at this!”  
  
He pointed to a sheet of paper tacked to the wall:  
  


**THE RED CRAYON ROYALTY**

_RED ROSE PRINCESS -- BEAR PRINCE_

_DUCHESS_  
_COUNTESS_  
_BARONESS_

_BOURGEOISIE -- POOR_

_BEGGAR_

  
And beside it, a cardboard chart:

**SOCIAL RANK**

**_Refined Class_ **

**Duchess** _Diana_  
**Countess** _Eleanor_  
**Baroness** _Meg_

**_Lower Class_ **

**Irritating** _Jennifer_  
**Miserable** _Amanda_

  
The titles were movable, likely for the purpose of promoting or demoting those who failed to meet expectations.  
  
“Well,” Sebastien remarked, an eyebrow raised as his gaze ran down the chart. “It seems the children set up quite the little hierarchy here.”  
  
“They seemed compliant enough with us,” Alastair noted.  
  
Grayson shrugged lightly. “It is the nature of children,” he said, “To fill in the vacuum of power where one exists. And I fear they can be even crueler about it than their adult counterparts when they have a mind to be.” Again, he thought of his time as an orphan on the streets, remembering the small gangs of children in the cities that would maintain their vicious pecking orders. The Rose Garden orphans were no different: They had simply enforced their social order in the safety of a warm, dry house, with limited (and evidently, insufficient) oversight from an adult. “But in my experience, it is also true that when a parent- or other indisputable authority figure- steps in, the hierarchy tends to crumble rather quickly. The adult is the biggest, the strongest, the smartest, and there’s a natural tendency for children to defer to one if one is present.”  
  
“Begs the question of what the Headmaster and Martha Carol were up to while this was occurring,” Alastair muttered. “Although I suppose this system in some way removes responsibility from the adults: If the children enforce order amongst themselves, no matter how twisted their methodology or mentality, it removes the burden of keeping them in line from the adults.”  
  
“Laziness,” Sebastien grunted succinctly. “Some children are wiser and smarter than their years, but they are still children. A guardian must not give them undue power before they are responsible enough to wield it, or it will twist their minds and hearts far faster and more permanently than an adult’s.”  
  
“Absolute power corrupts absolutely,” Grayson intoned. “It seems Diana ranked rather highly; I suppose it might explain why she seems a bit hostile and dominant towards Jennifer…” A sudden thought struck him dumb: It had occurred to him that Clara, Wendy, the two smaller girls, and the boys were not including on the list- unless perhaps they occupied the Bourgeoisie categories.  
  
Or the higher ones.  
  
“But Wendy, I think… Was the Princess,” Grayson said, tapping the _Red Rose Princess_ illustration on the flowchart. “Diana told me before that she had been instructed by Wendy not to contact the police about Clara’s death, or the disappearances of Hoffman and Carol. She said that Wendy was ‘in charge’, and that Jennifer had ‘taken over for her’ earlier this evening, before the murders.”  
  
“Without context, I would be wholly willing to believe that you were speaking of a functioning government run by adults,” Alastair muttered ruefully. “Whether that is an indictment of children or adults, I will leave to your own interpretations.”  
  
But Sebastien was horrified. “Why on _earth_ would she not want to call for the police when a girl was dead?”  
  
“It’s easier to maintain power when there are no adults to bring you to heel,” Grayson supposed with a small shrug. “It need be no more complicated than that.”  
  
Sebastien shook his head. “No, it need not.”  
  
The three Knights took off through the ship, searching for their lost charges. The ship itself seemed entirely abandoned of anything or anyone normal, only some ominous remnants- a shoe, a doll, a half-eaten lollipop- to indicate that anyone had ever been there at all. They heard whispers, footsteps and clicking and soft thumping here and there, but the Imps did not reappear. Still, the small indicators of their presence were enough to ensure that the Knights kept on their guard.  
  
“They’re not attacking,” Grayson noted as they passed a door that he was certain had just been cracked open, a ghoulish little face peering through. “I’m certain they know we’re here, but they’re not attacking.”  
  
“A blessing, then,” Alastair said.  
  
“I would not call it a blessing just yet,” Sebastien protested. “We’ve no idea what else could be wandering around in the dark; they could simply be leaving us to an uglier fate than their own.”  
  
He kept glancing upwards, and Grayson knew he was watching out for Clara.  
  
“A smoking room!” Alastair observed as they passed into a new room (one that was finally unlocked), sarcasm bleeding into each word. “How wonderful- do either of you have a lighter on hand? A cigarette- or ten- sounds wonderful right about now.”  
  
“I’d rather have a drink,” Sebastien returned. “Vodka, or whatever else would be strong enough to render me entirely unconscious.”  
  
**_Thump!_**  
  
**_Thump!_**  
  
**_Thump!_**  
  
All three men froze; these sounds were considerably louder than the ones they had heard as they’d crept through the halls.  
  
“Where did it come from?”  
  
Almost in answer, another **_Thump!_** rang out.  
  
Grayson glanced at Sebastien, eyebrows high on his forehead. “Back the way we came, it seems.”  
  
They moved as a group with Grayson looking forward, Alastair looking behind, and Sebastien still keeping his eye on the darkness above them in the event that anymore mutilated mermaid girls fell onto their heads again- the old Knight had been good and properly traumatized by the encounter, it seemed. They came to a turn, a small hallway with a dead-end and only one room, one that had absolutely been locked when they had passed by only a few minutes before-  
  
-and the sound of voices.  
  
Grayson motioned to their left, and they moved down the hall- at least the dead-end left one direction they didn’t need to guard against. There was a horizontal cut in the wall near the door, a very large sort of peephole that looked into a small, dimly-lit room. Grayson detected movement, and peered inside.  
  
Lo and behold, Jennifer was standing near the center of the room with her back to the peephole, and Diana was sitting against the wall to the right. They had been speaking before, voices audible but the words unintelligible. How they had missed the girls on their first pass was baffling- but then, maybe they hadn’t been there for long.  
  
_But the door was locked._  
  
_I’m certain it was locked._  
  
But then, he had been certain that Clara was dead, hadn’t he?  
  
Grayson pulled back from the peephole and made for the door, but Sebastien gripped him by the wrist and held up his other hand. _Hold_ , he mouthed, and, motioned for Grayson and Alastair to lean in closer. “Jennifer seems unable, and Diana unwilling, to tell the full truth,” he said in barely a whisper, “Perhaps we might learn a little by listening.”  
  
“-did _nothing_ to Sir Peter,” Diana was saying irritably. “That mad little beast bludgeoned her own rabbit to death, I’m sure of it.”  
  
Silence. “Well, you killed Brown.”  
  
“Meg, Eleanor, and myself.”  
  
“So… Why shouldn’t I believe you killed Peter?”  
  
“We killed your dog because Wendy said to.” Grayson grimaced at the bluntness with which Diana made that pronouncement. What exactly had these children been getting up to? A fictional monarchy was one thing, but beating animals to death was something else entirely. “But Sir Peter was Wendy’s, and Wendy was Princess, and so killing her rabbit without her say-so would have had me demoted in a heartbeat, never mind…” Here, Diana’s voice hitched. “…Never mind Stray Dog. I didn’t _see_ her kill it, mind you-”  
  
“Then how do you _know?_ ”  
  
“Because she was furious you wouldn’t get rid of Brown, and when nobody else would own up to it I figured it _had_ to be her!” Diana snapped. “Wendy only _told_ you that we took Peter to make you feel sorry for her.” Now Diana’s voice turned malicious. “And just in case you need a reminder, it wasn’t _me_ that brought that wretched lunatic of a man to our front door to kill us all.”  
  
Jennifer bowed her head. It looked at though she might be playing with her hands; where she had been a little confident before, now she seemed to have retreated into herself. Jennifer mumbled something that Grayson couldn’t hear.  
  
“I’ve no idea what happened to them- for all I know, Wendy set Stray Dog on them and hid the bodies somewhere. But Clara is most definitely _dead_ , Jennifer, whether Stray Dog did it or not.”  
  
Silence. Jennifer was still faced away from the peephole, and Grayson could not see her expression.  
  
“But you already knew that, didn’t you? Sometimes I simply cannot tell if you are mad, stupid, or have the worst memory of anyone ever in the whole _world._ ”  
  
Silence. Jennifer did not move.  
  
“She was in Hoffman’s room, Jennifer- that’s why I sent Sir Galahad there. Why do you think it was _Hoffman’s_ room that Clara was found in, Jenn-i-fah? Why do you think she chose to die _there?_ ”  
  
Jennifer shuffled uneasily in place. “Well,” she said softly, so much so that Grayson strained to hear it, “I know that… That Mr. Hoffman made Clara clean his room all the time-”  
  
She was interrupted by a loud bark of a laugh from Diana.  
  
“You think she was _cleaning_ in there with him! You think _that’s_ what they spent _hours_ doing behind closed doors at night? Jennifer, you are a _twit_.” The malice in Diana’s voice was incomparable now. “You know very well that’s not at _all_ why Clara went into Mr. Hoffman’s room all the time. I know you saw them together at least once- Hoffman was furious.”  
  
Jennifer turned her head to look directly at Diana, but she said nothing.  
  
And Grayson turned, slowly, to Sebastien and Alastair; Sebastien’s expression was grave, and Alastair had lost most of his color.  
  
_Jennifer’s a baby. She sees what she wants to see._  
  
They didn’t need context: It was obvious enough was Diana was implying.  
  
The older girl snorted, rubbed her hands over her eyes. When she spoke, her voice was thick: “To think, all this time I was worried that you would tell the others. Do you really, truly _not_ get it, Jennifer? Do you honestly _not_ understand why Clara was Hoffman’s ‘favorite’?”  
  
A beat. “But _you’re_ his favorite.”  
  
Diana let out another bark of laughter; one that turned almost immediately into a series of heaving, wretched sobs. “It’s all his fault that this happened! _I hope he’s dead!_ ” She screamed, the sudden volume of her words making Grayson flinch. “ _I hope he’s been eaten by sharks! I hope he fell and broke his neck! I hope he was trampled by horses! I hate him! **I HATE HIM!**_ ”  
  
Grayson stepped towards the door. In part he was concerned that she would attract the Imps; but even aside from that, Diana’s distress was uncomfortable in the extreme to observe. Every new thing they learned about this orphanage and its inhabitants made him feel more and more like someone had dropped a handful of worms and spiders down the back of his shirt.  
  
When he pulled the door open, Jennifer seemed to be the only one who noticed, jumping around to face him; Diana continued her weeping against the wall, and Alastair moved to crouch beside her, whispering things that Grayson could not hear.  
  
Now that she was facing him, Grayson could see that Jennifer was holding a small, flimsy collection of papers: A makeshift storybook bound together with worn yarn. He knelt down in front of her. “What’s that you have, Jennifer?”  
  
She stared at him, and then slowly held out the book, offering it to him.  
  
Grayson took it. The picture on the front was a hand-drawn little girl standing beside a big man with a dog’s head. The title read,

**STRAY DOG AND THE LYING PRINCESS**

Stray Dog, the creature in the chalk-scribbles on the orphanage wall; Stray Dog and his peas, from Jennifer’s song.  
  
Grayson opened the book.  
  
_Once upon a time, there was a little girl who told lies._  
  
(A little girl, lying in bed)  
  
_She liked to scare the other girls by screaming, “Stray Dog is coming, Stray Dog is coming!”_  
  
(The same little girl, still in bed but now surrounded by other little girls)  
  
_But soon, everyone stopped being scared. They hated the way that she lied._  
  
(The same scene, but with the girls leaving the little girl in the bed)  
  
_One day, the girl came home screaming, “Stray Dog is coming, really!”_  
  
(The girls in a house, the little girl running to them from outside)  
  
_Everyone thought it was just another lie._  
  
(The little girl outside, surrounded by the other girls.)  
  
_Except this time, it was no lie at all, and so they were all gobbled up._  
  
_The End._  
  
The last illustration of the book was a grisly scene, one depicting a big, mean dog surrounded by dead children soaked in blood. The artist, who had drawn the book in pencil to this point, had actually colored in the blood with red crayon. The more that he looked, the more Grayson thought that the tallest of the little girls in the book looked like Diana; the other girls were so distinct in their details (a little girl with short dark hair, a pudgy girl with pigtails, a little girl with glasses) that it was impossible for them not to be based off the little girls they had found massacred in the courtyard.  
  
Grayson stared at the flimsy little storybook, and then looked to Jennifer. “Is this about Wendy?” he asked. “Did she bring Mr. Wilson to your orphanage?”  
  
For the first time that night, tears sprang to Jennifer’s eyes. “She told the others to kill my dog,” she whispered. “And they did it. I was so mad that I told them all she’d been lying about him, about Stray Dog. I thought she was, honest! She’d said she was protecting us from him for so many months, and I thought she was lying. But then she-”  
  
Jennifer’s breath stuttered here, like she couldn’t force the words out.  
  
_The man in question was down on all fours, behaving in a dog-like manner as the child, a girl, gave him instructions that Ms. Carol could not hear._  
  
Alastair’s words, verbatim; they now had their answer as to which child had been observed in those strange interactions with Mr. Wilson. “She brought him here to prove you wrong.”  
  
Jennifer nodded, tears streaming down her face. “He killed them all,” she whispered. “Except for Diana and I, by accident. And then he shot himself.”  
  
“She brought him here because she was a little _beast_ ,” Diana sobbed. “And she wanted us all dead for booting her from the club. Be as mad at me as you want about Brown, Jennifer, but at least I didn’t spend all these months smiling at you and pretending to be your friend while I was putting a knife in your back!”  
  
“Enough,” Alastair said gently but firmly when Jennifer squeaked out a sob of her own. “All of this can be hashed out later, when everyone’s safe. Jennifer, Diana, do you know where we are, or how to return to the orphanage?”  
  
Both girls shook their heads.  
  
**_THUMP!_**  
  
**_THUMP!_**  
  
**_THUMP!_**  
  
Silence fell in the room.  
  
Those same thumps they had heard in the hall were far louder now.  
  
“Dear God, tell me it’s not the mermaid girl again,” Sebastien whispered, casting his gaze back to the (thankfully, perfectly visible) ceiling.  
  
And then, from the hall, a voice called out:  
  
“ _Jenn-i- **FER!**_ _Di-an- **AH!**_ ”  
  
Jennifer gasped; what color was left in Diana’s face disappeared, and Grayson feared she was about to swoon.  
  
“ _Have- you- made- a- **MESS?**_ ”  
  
A man’s voice, an awkward and strange bellow that sounded far more threatening than it would have under other circumstances.  
  
“ _I- am- **COMING!**_ ”  
  
Sebastien ran for the door, making sure it was shut, holding the knob and leaning against it. “Galahad, the key!”  
  
Grayson searched his pockets frantically. Where had he put it?  
  
“ ** _DIRTY_** \- _girls! **WRETCHED-**_ _girls!_ _COME_ … ** _OUT! NOW!_** ”  
  
“ _Grayson!_ ”  
  
“I have it!” Grayson hurried to the door and forced the key into the lock, twisting it and hearing the lock click. He and Sebastien backed away from the door.  
  
“You said he just _left!_ ” Jennifer wheezed, backing up until she was pressed against the wall beside Diana.  
  
“I thought he did, I thought he just went away!” Diana sounded nearly hysterical.  
  
“Who?”  
  
“ _Hoffman!_ ”  
  
**_WHAM!_**  
  
The door shuddered under the force of an immense blow, causing Diana to shriek and Jennifer to dive down and take shelter beside the older girl.  
  
“ ** _DIRTY!_** ”  
  
**_WHAM!_**  
  
The Knights raised their guns, kept them leveled at the door.  
  
“ ** _FILTHY!_** ”  
  
**_WHAM!_**  
  
“It’s going to give,” Alastair said loudly as the hinges started to creak and the door audibly splintered. “Maybe we should just open it.”  
  
“ ** _WRETCHED!_** ”  
  
**_WHAM!_**  
  
“ _No!_ ” Diana shrieked, Jennifer partially curled onto her lap and rocking back and in panic.  
  
“ ** _BRATS!_** ”  
  
**_WHAM!_**  
  
“The quarters are too small, and we don’t know what he’s capable of,” Grayson protested.  
  
“ ** _OPEN!_** ”  
  
**_WHAM!_**  
  
“Don’t open the door!” Jennifer wailed.  
  
“ ** _THIS!_** ”  
  
**_WHAM!_**  
  
“It’s coming down anyways!” Sebastien cried, cocking the shotgun.  
  
“ ** _DOOR!_** ”  
  
**_WHAM!_**  
  
The door cracked visibly, and then slammed open.  
  
“ ** _THERE- YOU- ARE!_** ”  
  
Diana started screaming hysterically.  
  
The thing in the doorway that used to be the children’s Headmaster was a horrific sight. He was covered in blood, but not visibly mutilated, and wrapped from head to toe in thick ropes. His legs were bound in such a way that he could still lurch and stumble along, and his right arm was free and swinging a cane; whether that was what he had used to break down the door, or if maybe he had just rammed himself against it until it had finally broken down, Grayson couldn’t be sure.  
  
Sebastien fired. The shot hit Hoffman’s shoulder, but unlike Clara, it didn’t seem to stop him: The ropes seemed to provide a level of protection against attack, even a close shot from a shotgun. Hoffman lunged into the room, swinging out his cane and catching Sebastien in the waist, _hurling him_ into the wall. Grayson was momentarily shocked- Hoffman didn’t look _that_ strong, but then, Clara had sprayed acid from her mouth, so maybe it wasn’t the strangest development of the night.  
  
Alastair charged forward, deftly ducking the swing of Hoffman’s cane. He got behind him, lifted his pistol-  
  
**_BANG!_**  
  
Hoffman jerked forward- and then turned and swung out at Alastair, knocking him into a set of shelves full of laundry baskets, all of which fell on top of him. Sebastien was wheezing, crawling back towards the fray, but Alastair seemed to be motionless, possibly unconscious. Grayson got to his feet, standing between Hoffman and the girls: He lifted his gun and took several successive shots at Hoffman’s head, nearly all of them hitting their mark, but those damnable _ropes_ continued to shield him-  
  
Hoffman stumbled forward, stopped, and then raised his cane to strike. Grayson did the only thing he could think to do: He lifted his leg and caught Hoffman in the middle of the chest, putting all of his strength into a kick that knocked Hoffman back, set him off-balance and very nearly tipping him back into the hallway.  
  
Oh, wonderful: Inhumanly strong, immune to bullets, but could be knocked about like a child’s toy if one struck him the right way.

Hoffman rolled over with surprising speed, but Grayson took the brief delay to look over at his comrades: Sebastien, seeing that Grayson evidently had the matter sorted, had moved to tend to Alastair who was groaning and coughing beneath the collapsed shelf. Once Hoffman had gotten to his feet again, Grayson quickly planted another kick into his chest, knocking him out of the room and into the hall.  
  
_The trick is to lure him away from the children,_ Grayson thought as he tried to formulate a plan. _They can’t defend themselves. If I can trap him somewhere, somewhere he can’t do any harm, I can circle back and escape with-_  
  
“ _AH!_ ”  
  
As he stepped into the hall to pursue Hoffman, something collided with Grayson’s leg, bringing him down. Hoffman’s cane had struck him, and _God_ , he understood now why Sebastien and Alastair had gone down so hard: It felt like someone had bashed him in the kneecap with a steel beam. There was a good chance his leg was broken.  
  
Grayson fell half-onto Hoffman, and had to quickly disentangle himself to avoid another strike. He half hobbled, half-crawled into the main walkway, wrestling his Blackwater out and swallowing some before running into the railing that overlooked the yawning, hollow space between the innards and the shell of the airship. Grayson turned, and then threw himself out of the way of another strike- for an older man bound from head to knee in thick ropes, Hoffman was ridiculously nimble and had recovered much faster than Grayson had.  
  
But then, if several bullets hadn’t stopped him, kicking him a few times sure wouldn’t break his stride.  
  
Grayson struggled to his feet, limping as the Blackwater slowly repaired his leg. “That’s right,” he wheezed, “Follow me, follow _me!_ ”  
  
Hoffman swung the cane in a wide, sweeping arc- Grayson ducked, stomach flipping at the thought of such a blow hitting his head. He lost his footing and fell, frantically backing up as Hoffman hurried forward, raising the cane high for a downward slash this time-  
  
“ _Hey!_ ”  
  
Hoffman did not react to the shout- but he suddenly fell back, legs scrabbling on the floor as he was dragged back; he swayed back and forth until he collided with the railing and, after a moment of teetering, toppled over it into the darkness below.  
  
Grayson stared at the spot where Hoffman had fallen.  
  
Then he looked up at his savior, who’d apparently had the brilliant thought to just grab one of the ropes and pull the bastard over the railing instead of some cockamamie scheme of leading him all over the ship in a wild goose chase until a better option arose.  
  
But then, Isabeau had always been quick-witted.  
  
“Well!” She reached up and pushed a loose strand of stray hair out of her eyes. “This is the best luck I’ve had all night, I think.”  
  
Grayson’s shoulders sagged with relief, bowing his head.  
  
“The best luck _all_ of us have had, Isi.”


	5. Chapter 5

Lafayette was determined to break this door down.  
  
He had woken up in a basement, dumped unceremoniously on a narrow cot beneath a window too small for him to weasel through. His head was aching powerfully, and though his memories were fuzzy he was fairly certain that whoever had taken him hadn’t done it intentionally. He had sipped gently at his vial of Blackwater a few minutes before, careful not to drain it; if he ran out, he was out until he found one of the others. As an uninitiated member of the Order, he didn’t have the power to replenish the Blackwater with his own blood yet.  
  
And since Lafayette could not be sure about whether or not he’d be suffering anymore injuries tonight, it was best to conserve his Blackwater for as long as possible.  
  
Of course, his odds of injury really only went up if he managed to leave this room.  
  
And right now, that was proving to be a challenge.  
  
Lafayette had gotten inventive: He had started with his shoulder, then tried kicking the door- he then paused, shoulder and foot aching, and checked the top of the doorframe for a key. When none was found, he picked up the tiny wooden table beside the bed and started going at it with that, then with the stool; currently, he was trying to break off a piece of the metal frame on the bed in the hopes that he might be able to wedge the door off the hinges.  
  
All the while, he was treated to the most delightful and absolutely _horrifying_ little rhyme from a man in the room right above him. The stranger had repeated the rhyme on loop for the last twenty minutes, and now Lafayette had lost his patience for it:  
  
“ _Stray Dog walks the streets each day_ , _collecting peas as he walks to and fro, big peas, small peas, every which kind of pea_ _._ ”  
  
“I wish that you would not, Monsieur!”  
  
“ _Come Monday, he finds a pea_ , _come Tuesday, he bags the pea_.”  
  
“That is called kidnapping, Monsieur!”  
  
“ _Come Wednesday, he shows the pea to his son_ , _come Thursday, the pea kicks and screams_.”  
  
“You absolutely terrify me, Monsieur!”  
  
“ _Come Friday, he grinds up the pea_ , _come Saturday, he buries the pea outside; the pea is in the ground_.”  
  
“Murder, Monsieur! The word you are looking for is _murder!_ ”  
  
“ _And by Sunday, it can't be found_. _Good night, young pea, good night, young pea._ ”  
  
And then the rhyme started all over again.  
  
Lafayette sagged for a moment, head bumping against the mattress on the thin cot. He was not a bloodthirsty man, but his greatest wish was to hear a gunshot cut off that ghastly rhyme, followed by Isabeau or Sebastien calling his name. One could only handle listening to a sadistic little rhyme full of thinly-veiled child-kidnapping and murder before one started to lose one’s empathy.  
  
“This must work,” Lafayette whispered to himself as he tried to work the bed-frame apart. “Because if it does not, I will go mad and shoot the lock. And that will probably kill me.” He couldn’t use the Blackwater if he had a bullet in his head, and that was a very real possibility if Lafayette found himself reduced to shooting at the door in such close quarters.  
  
 _-click._  
  
He stiffened, and then turned to look at the door.  
  
It was hanging open a crack.  
  
Lafayette’s eyes narrowed. _It cannot be that easy._  
  
He stood swiftly and silently, drawing his gun and creeping over to the door. The room opened into a dank, narrow cellar taken up mostly by a staircase, which Lafayette traversed slowly, wincing at every creak and groan of the wood.  
  
The ground level of the house that Lafayette found himself in smelled even more mildewed and rotten as the basement, which certainly said a lot. The hallways were claustrophobic and indistinct, and for a moment Lafayette felt dizzy as he peered around the corners and saw more corners and a handful of doors that looked the same.  
  
He pulled back, took a long, silent breath, and then started towards the man’s voice.  
  
The stranger was still rhyming, hadn’t broke his stride once or changed positions since the basement door opened, so Lafayette was certain that it wasn’t him that had set him loose. He had not been so pressed to wonder before, as concerned as he had been with escaping the basement room, but now Lafayette was confronted with the inevitable question: Who was it he was hearing now? The man who had murdered the children at the orphanage was dead, his body set apart from theirs in the yard. Was this an accomplice? Were there two separate murderers, the man kidnapping local children _and_ the man that had murdered the orphans?  
  
 _Only one way to find out, I suppose._  
  
Lafayette arrived in front of the door that the voice was coming from. It could be no other: When he pressed his ear carefully to the door, he heard the man’s voice as though it were only a few feet away.  
  
He eased the door opened with barely more than a crack, raising his pistol as the door swung aside to reveal…  
  
…Nobody.  
  
It was a small study with a small desk seated a few feet away from the door, but no one was sitting in it; the voice had fallen totally silent as the door had opened.  
  
Lafayette looked around to be sure, and then lowered his gun, throwing one hand up in frustration. “First, a ghost dog. Then, murdered children. Now their killer’s ghost taunts me with horrific rhymes.”  
  
He started off down the hall, frustrated and unnerved. Lafayette stopped only when he found a door that way partly open, a slight draft coming through. When he stepped inside, he found himself in a room that had once clearly been a child’s: The badly-peeling wallpaper deep blue and covered in clouds, and there were dusty, rusting toys and broken furniture scattered about.  
  
Lafayette shivered, and not from the draft; all he could think of was that awful verse and what might have befallen whatever child had been unfortunate enough to share a home with the man that had written it.  
  
The breeze was coming from the window on the far wall: It was wide open, and Lafayette could see the outline of a deck in the darkness. Eagerly, he holstered his pistol and hurried for it, reaching out to brace himself on the frame-  
  
 _WHAM!_  
  
The window slammed shut, and Lafayette jumped back in alarm.  
  
“You’re not very good at escaping.”  
  
Lafayette froze- literally and figuratively. The room had become impossibly cold in a matter of seconds.  
  
He turned around.  
  
Standing beside him, in front of the door, was the very same boy that he and Isabeau had seen before being taken by the Imps. “Hello,” he said carefully. “I am Lafayette. Who are you?”  
  
The boy was no more than eight or nine; pale, with sandy brown hair and dark circles beneath his dark eyes. He squinted at Lafayette like the man was an unusually tricky arithmetic problem he wanted to solve. “This was my room,” he said finally.  
  
Lafayette made a show of glancing around at the run-down room. “Yes, this does look like a little boy’s room. Are these your toys, the soldiers?”  
  
The boy nodded. “They were, until I died.”  
  
Lafayette swallowed thickly. Common sense told him that ghosts did not exist; reality told him that he was protégée to an immortal organization of knights that subsisted off of nectar from the Holy Grail and hunted werewolves and vampires, and that as such it would be foolish to dismiss the possibility of ghosts. “How did you die?”  
  
The boy shrugged. “I coughed a lot.”  
  
Well, that could be a lot of things. Children, Lafayette knew all too well, died far too easily.  
  
“And you stayed here after you died?” Lafayette continued. “You did not… Move on, pass away?”  
  
The boy shook his head. “I stayed and watched daddy.” Now there was a subtle shift to his stature, his expression, his tone. “Daddy brought a little girl home after I died. She made him think she was me: He gave her my clothes, my toys- he even called her by my name. She took my place, made daddy forget me- and now he’s dead too.”  
  
Lafayette’s heart ached. “I’m sure that’s not true,” he told the boy gently, taking a small step forward; the boy did not step back, which he took as a good sign. “My little girl, my Henriette, died many years ago. Her mother and I had other children after her, but I have never for a single day forgotten her. I love her still, for as long as I last in this world or the next. Your father may have been… Confused, perhaps, but I do not doubt for a moment that he loves you still, even in death.”  
  
If the child found these words moving in any way, he gave no sign. His expression remained cold and stormy. “It doesn’t matter: Daddy’s dead now, and it’s because of her and her rotten little friends,” The little boy whispered, eyes dark. “Because of their games and schemes. Now they all die.”  
  
“Little friend,” Lafayette said genially, “They are children, just like you. Surely they didn’t know any better.”  
  
“ _She_ did,” The boy hissed, fists clenched at his sides. “The one that got daddy to be her dog- _she_ dressed up like me and used my name too. _She_ knew what she was doing, right up to the end. She only felt bad because _her_ friend was going to get hurt. She didn’t care about daddy, or about the other children. She _wanted_ daddy to gobble them up. He wouldn’t have died if he hadn’t gobbled them up.”  
  
Lafayette was chilled: This was nearly word-for-word what Alastair had told them about the letter the Cardington police had received, about one of the orphan girls that had been ‘training’ a local man like a dog. “Child, please, let me help you,” Lafayette pled, kneeling down and trying to assert that he was of no threat. “I know you’re angry, but it doesn’t have to be this way. I can-”  
  
“No.”  
  
Lafayette fell silent.  
  
“There’s nothing you can do or say that will change anything now. Those orphans, they wanted daddy to be Stray Dog, and so now he’s Stray Dog. And Stray Dog will finish what he started.” The boy cocked his head. “I only want the girls who lived. You and your friends can leave. If you don’t, daddy will gobble you up too.”  
  
“Child-”  
  
The boy was gone.  
  
Disappeared- quite literally- in the blink of an eye.  
  
Lafayette straightened up quickly, looking around to ensure that the boy hadn’t appeared behind him. He hadn’t, he was good and properly gone- or so he seemed to be. Lafayette hurried out of the room, eager to leave the house before something else could go slamming shut, trapping him inside. He needed to find the others urgently, needed to warn them what the boy was intending: They had to take those two little girls and get them as far away from the orphanage as possible.  
  
The boy made no attempt to stop Lafayette as he ran out of the house. This was both promising and unnerving: Lafayette now had a chance to find the others, but evidently the boy had meant what he said about the Knights being targeted alongside the girls if they refused to leave. Lafayette kept looking around anxiously as he walked to the front gate.  
  
It was still so dark; which way should he go? He had no idea where he was, or where the orphanage was in relation to the house. Lafayette turned around, craned his head to look for light, went to the edge of the path and thought of trying to boost himself up into one of the trees-  
  
“ _Ah!_ ” Lafayette hissed, jerking his hand to his chest. He had pricked his fingers on the branches of a bare bush on the edge of the path, blood rising quickly from the wounds. He grimaced, surprised and wondering if maybe he should waste any Blackwater on this, all because he’d been careless around a…  
  
…Wait.  
  
Lafayette got closer, squinting in the dark. It was hard to tell, but if he had to guess from the sharp thorns on the branches…  
  
Roses! The path was lined in rose bushes! They were all dead, of course, because it was December, but he was almost certain they were roses.  
  
Lafayette knew there was a possibility he was wrong, but it made the most sense in this moment to follow the path of roses to its namesake, the Rose Garden Orphanage.  
  
Thunder rumbled overhead, and a few drops of rain sprinkled on his face.  
  
 _Better to hurry even more, then._  
  
[---]  
  
The airship was _bloody_ big.  
  
“So no one has any idea why this has been happening?” Isabeau asked incredulously. “I thought I’d just been kidnapped and brought to the port.”  
  
“Not even a clue,” Grayson confirmed with a sigh. “The girls haven’t the faintest either. They say this hasn’t happened before.”  
  
“Except for the Imps,” Jennifer said softly. “I’ve seen them before tonight.”  
  
“And here I thought you were just lying or mad,” Diana remarked, only a little snidely this time. She was holding Alastair’s hand, limping much more heavily than she had been before. He had offered to carry her, but she had refused with a sharp shake of her head and struggled on. Unpredictable temper and attitude aside, Grayson could appreciate her grit.  
  
“Was there any pattern to it, Jennifer? To when you saw the Imps?” Sebastien pushed. “Did they come often? At night, or during the day?”  
  
Jennifer was silent for a moment, thinking. “…No. Sometimes I didn’t see them very clearly. Sometimes I thought I was dreaming- sometimes I might have been. I’m not so sure.”  
  
“Did you see any tonight, before, ah… Mr. Wilson came?”  
  
“Um…” Jennifer rubbed her head. “…No. But I think I heard them whispering.”  
  
“Before or after the meeting?” Diana interjected.  
  
“Which one?”  
  
“The first one, with Wendy.”  
  
“I heard some whispering before, but… But I heard more right before Gregory came.” Jennifer rubbed her head again, frowning. “Maybe they came with Wendy. Maybe she brought them too, in case he couldn’t kill me.”  
  
“Yes, well, you did jump on top of her and started slapping her and screaming ‘I hate you, I hate you, I’ll never forgive you’,” Diana muttered. “So I imagine she wanted you dead rather badly.”  
  
“She told you to kill my dog,” Jennifer grumbled in return.  
  
“I didn’t say you were _wrong_ to slap her, merely that you did.” Diana snorted. “Bit surprising, really. I didn’t think you had it in you.”  
  
“Is that why you made me Princess?”  
  
“Of course it was: She who slaps the life out of the previous Princess gets to be the new one.” It was the first time Grayson had heard Diana actually make a joke, or sound anything but moody.  
  
Suddenly, he bumped into Isabeau. She had been leading the way but had stopped abruptly, turning and eyeing the girls with a bizarre look. “What in _God’s_ name are these children talking about?” She whispered.  
  
“Oh, it’s all such a long story-”  
  
“One that can be eagerly rehashed when we are not still at risk of being attacked by mermaid girls, rope-men, or Imps,” Alastair said brusquely. He was still wheezing pretty badly; Hoffman’s cane had caught him in the ribs, breaking several of them and probably damaging his lungs in the process. The Blackwater was working, but there were extensive injuries to be healed and it didn’t help that they had to keep moving, which interfered with the process.  
  
“Alright,” Isabeau said slowly, raising an eyebrow at her brother. “But this airship: What purpose does it have here, and why- well, why have _you_ gone back and forth between it and the orphanage? Why would an airship even be relevant to the orphanage?”  
  
Silence. Grayson turned to regard the girls, and he caught Diana giving Jennifer a look; it wasn’t a mean look, wasn’t a cold one either, but more of a wary ‘I have something to say, but I’m not sure if I should say it’ one. Jennifer, for her part, looked like she might be about to cry. “Diana, Jennifer- something to say?”  
  
Diana met his gaze. “Nope.”  
  
Grayson cocked an eyebrow at her. “Nothing?”  
  
“Nothing at all.” She seemed confident with her answer, and Jennifer looked a little less weepy now.  
  
Grayson sighed, and decided to leave it alone.  
  
He stepped forward and opened the next door. It opened into a large dormitory room full of bunk-beds, with large, wide windows-  
  
“We’re back!” Diana blurted out. “This is the dormitory where we all sleep, we’re back in the orphanage now.”  
  
“Thank God,” Sebastien said lowly. “Which way gets us out of here fastest?”  
  
Diana let go of Alastair’s hand and hobbled forward, leading them to a door at the other end of the room. “Down here, it’s already open, the hallway’s normal- once we’re out, the only door between us and the outside is the very front door.”  
  
Sebastien joined her at the door, peering into the hallway and keeping his shotgun ready. “I don’t see anything- or _hear_ anything,” he added in a brief grumble. “Let’s hurry: Once we’re outside, we can figure out where to go and what to do next.”  
  
“What about Lafayette?”  
  
“You know him; Lafayette would want us to secure the children before doing anything else.” Sebastien punctuated the statement with a look, and Grayson knew he was right: Even if Lafayette was in mortal danger, he would want them to ensure that Diana and Jennifer were safe before coming to his rescue. He was terribly fond of children, still close enough to his mortal life to remember his own: Christ, the older of his daughters had died in 1863, not all that long ago. “Let me go first, dear.”  
  
Diana stepped back and let Sebastien go. Grayson went next, then Jennifer and Diana, then Alastair and Isabeau. They hurried as quickly as they could in the dark, Sebastien leading them down the stairs at Diana’s direction. Grayson kept his eyes open, but at this point he was far less concerned about encountering another monster than he was the orphanage shifting again, sending them back to the airship. It seemed too good to be true when they reached the front door unimpeded.  
  
Thunder rolled overhead, deep and ominous.  
  
“Of course it would start raining again now,” Isabeau growled. “Can’t stay inside, can’t go back to the cab, so of course we’ll end up in a thunderstorm.”  
  
“We’ll just have to grin and bear it,” Sebastien said tightly. “We’ll walk the road until we find a house, and we’ll ask them to contact the police. Girls, do you know who lives closest to here, aside from Wilson?”  
  
No response.  
  
Sebastien turned, hand on the door handle. “Jennifer? Diana?”  
  
Grayson turned around.  
  
He was relieved too see that the girls hadn’t simply disappeared. But Diana was staring down the hall to the right of the foyer, expression stricken. Jennifer’s expression was slack, numb.  
  
“What is it?”  
  
Jennifer raised a hand, pointing down the hallway.  
  
Grayson looked.  
  
The hallway was lined in candles, illuminating the walls with a soft, eerie light- light that had absolutely _not_ been present a moment ago when they had first walked past the hallway. And now that he was paying closer attention, there was a soft sound coming from a half-open door only a little ways down the hallway; at first Grayson thought it was whispering, but it wasn’t.  
  
It was giggling.  
  
Diana started towards the room without a word, Jennifer following as though under a spell. Grayson’s blood-pressure rose exponentially: The hallway was separated from the foyer by way of a door. And though it currently stood wide open, the events of the night had shown that that could change very quickly.  
  
“Where in blazes are they going?” Sebastien asked, frustration bleeding into his voice.  
  
“Stay by the main door,” Grayson advised. “Lucan, you stay by this one- Igraine, follow me and see that the one the girls are going through doesn’t close on us.”  
  
Grayson followed the girls as Alastair and Isabeau took their places. The room that they had stepped into was large, barely illuminated by the few candles inside of it. It was the flashes of lightning from the window that revealed the terrain: It was a classroom, the desks having been pushed aside and stacked on top of one another, chairs haphazardly scattered about the room. It was obvious that the room hadn’t been used for actual studies for a long time.  
  
But on the periphery of the room, during those intermittent flashes of light Grayson could see silhouettes moving in the darkness:  
  
The classroom was full of children.  
  
They were definitely children, not Imps- he could make out their features, could tell they were human.  
  
And at the far end, seated in a group of chairs with two other girls, was Diana. Standing before her was Jennifer.  
  
The Jennifer and Diana standing with the Knights were pale and shaking. “What…?” Diana whispered, a few tears leaking from her eyes.  
  
“Greetings,” Other-Diana said in a tone that wasn’t exactly _sweet,_ but was quite a bit nicer than any Grayson had heard her use thus far. “Princess, please forgive all that I’ve done.”  
  
“Greetings, Princess Jennifer!” said the short-haired blonde girl (Olivia? No, no, Meg, Grayson was sure of it) seated in the middle chair, looking to Other-Jennifer. “Thank you very much for coming to our new Aristocrat Club!”  
  
“Greetings, Princess Jennifer! From now on, you’ll be our new Princess!” said the very same dark-haired girl that Grayson had found dead on the front steps of the orphanage earlier that night.  
  
“Meg,” Diana said thickly, hobbling towards the girls in the chair. “Eleanor!” She reached out to touch the dark-haired girl, but she stumbled as her hand passed right through Eleanor’s shoulder.  
  
“Now, Princess,” Meg said, “Please think up a new game!”  
  
“Please, lead us!” Eleanor said.  
  
“We are yours to command, Princess,” Other-Diana promised.  
  
“Princess!” Amanda, the girl with the pigtails, fell to her knees beside Other-Jennifer. “Guide us! We need you… We don’t know what to do!”  
  
Other-Jennifer was staring at the girls with obvious confusion. “I don’t…” She whispered, looking back and forth between them. “…why me?”  
  
Diana was sobbing. Jennifer was crying silently, and her gaze had regained that detached quality it had had when he’d first found her in the foyer. “Look,” she croaked. “Look, it’s Wendy, it’s Wendy.”  
  
“What?” Grayson knelt down beside her. “Jennifer, what did you say?”  
  
“Look!” A little girl with braids was at the window, peering out through the rain. “Look, it’s Wendy! It’s Wendy!”  
  
Amanda joined the girl with the braids- _Susan_ , that was it- at the window. “It’s her, alright. What’s she doing out there in the rain?”  
  
Other-Diana exchanged looks with Meg and Eleanor, and shrugged. “Wonder what _she_ wants?”  
  
“Probably to lie to us a little more,” Meg grumbled, shutting the notebook in her hands and setting it down on her chair as she stood up. “I suppose we should see what she wants, mm?”  
  
“ _No!_ ” Diana cried, down on her knees beside Eleanor’s chair.  
  
“I suppose we should,” Other-Diana agreed, pushing herself off the chair with a grace that seemed to come natural to her and all but skipping towards the door, the other girls hot on her heels; Olivia, Thomas, Xavier, and Nicholas followed, emerging from the shadows and running out the classroom door.  
  
“Don’t go,” Diana wept, curling her arms around her knees and weeping into them. “Don’t go, don’t go, please don’t go.”  
  
Other-Jennifer didn’t go. She stood silently in the room, watching as the other children disappeared.  
  
And then the screams started, all coming from the front yard.  
  
“Grayson!”  
  
Grayson’s head whipped back towards the door, where Isabeau was looking in worriedly. He wasn’t sure if she’d seen the ghost children or not- surely she must have? He stood up, darting forward to grab Diana under the arms and pull her to her feet. She did not actively resist him, but she was deadweight in his hands. “Diana, we must go.”  
  
“No,” she protested weakly, so obviously exhausted now that she could barely even cry. “He’s out there.”  
  
Other-Jennifer crept across the room now, disappearing into the darkness. Jennifer watched her go, still dazed and unfocused. “No,” she whispered.  
  
“ _Grayson!_ ” came Sebastien’s shout from the front hall.  
  
 ** _BAM!_**  
  
Shouts from the foyer; Isabeau abandoned her position at the door, her rifle raised.  
  
Jennifer looked to Grayson. “He’s in _here_.”  
  
 _Fuck!_  
  
Grayson got up and ran for the door. Reluctant as he was to leave the girls unattended again, the thought of what had just come plowing through the door- and Grayson did have an inkling as to what it was- had him experiencing a dire fear for his comrades. If a teenage girl dangling from the ceiling and an old man wrapped up in ropes had been a match for them…  
  
He skidded into the foyer. Sebastien was on the ground, barely conscious, a hand on his head. Isabeau and Alastair had their guns raised at the two dark figures in the doorway:  
  
One was a little boy, the very same one Grayson had seen in the woods on their way to the orphanage.  
  
And the other- as he had dreaded- was Gregory Wilson, as the children of the Rose Garden Orphanage had seen him in their last moments.  
  
Wilson was on all fours, and though he was not as warped as twisted as Clara or Hoffman had been, there was an unusually animalistic quality to his face and body. He did and did not quite look human all at once, and it created an absolutely _terrifying_ effect.  
  
The boy cocked his head. “Where are they?” he asked, eyes flipping to each of the Knights in turn.  
  
“Where’s who?” Alastair asked sharply.  
  
“The girls- where are they?”  
  
The Knights were silent. Grayson couldn’t account for his comrades, but he, for one, was so overwhelmed by this turn of events that he could not come up with a wise and careful response: Obviously he didn’t intend to reveal where Diana and Jennifer were, and he hoped now that they would lock themselves in the classroom and not come out.  
  
“I only want them,” the boy said coldly, flatly. “The rest of you can leave.”  
  
“That will not be happening,” Grayson returned, slowly reaching for his pistol. “Lad, you needn’t make things any worse than they already are: Just let us leave.”  
  
“ _You_ can,” The boy said, as Wilson took a few small, menacing steps forward. “But _they_ can’t.”  
  
Grayson’s hand curled around his gun.  
  
Then, with a speed honed from centuries of practice, he pulled it loose, aimed, and shot at Wilson.  
  
The bullet struck him square in the head.  
  
And like with Hoffman, it did absolutely nothing.  
  
“Bad choice,” the boy sniffed.  
  
Wilson leapt forward into the foyer, knocking Isabeau away with a wide swipe of his arm. Alastair he grabbed by the jacket and slammed against the wall- Grayson heard bones snapping as the undertone to Alastair’s pained cry. He rounded on Grayson, who raised his pistol in pitiful defiance; he had no other idea beyond running, and there were very few avenues of escape.  
  
“ _Joshua!_ ”  
  
Wilson froze.  
  
Jennifer appeared in the hall behind Grayson, horror and grief etched into her face. “Joshua, _please!_ Don’t do this!”  
  
The boy, Joshua, turned to face her. There was a subtle shift in the… _make_ of him, for a moment. Something darker and uglier bubbled beneath his eyes, something that seemed as eerily inhuman as Wilson. “Daddy,” he said softly, little-boy voice menacing and icy cold. “Get her.”  
  
Wilson reared back, getting ready to strike.  
  
Grayson imagined Jennifer’s little body broken and bloodied the way the other children’s had, and acted on impulse: He jumped onto Wilson, slamming into him as he went to lunge and knocking him off-balance. Grayson had, quite unintentionally, found a sweet-spot: He got his arms around Wilson’s neck, one leg over his back, almost riding him. Wilson could not bite him, and since Grayson was quite a bit heavier than a child, he wasn’t as easier to dislodge or pull off. They slammed about the foyer, Grayson’s legs and back and elbow slamming into hard surfaces.  
  
Suddenly they were outside, and they were falling.  
  
Grayson let go out of surprise, head striking the muddy, half-frozen ground of the courtyard with enough force to see stars. Evidently Wilson had stumbled out of the front door and lost his balance on the stairs. Grayson tried to straighten up, but a bad and dangerous pain shot through his neck and he had to grab his vial of Blackwater, choking some down in a panic.  
  
 ** _BANG! BANG! BANG!_**  
  
Grayson rolled over. Isabeau had pursued Wilson, managing a few shots from her rifle. He turned and lunged at her, biting deep into her right shoulder and making her scream. Grayson forced himself up, hobbling over and grabbing Wilson by the shoulder, trying to pull him off; Wilson saw him coming and knocked him away like he was nothing this time.  
  
A louder, higher-pitched scream than Isabeau’s echoed through the yard, followed by a **_thwack!_** When Grayson sat up, he saw Diana standing on the steps with a golf club in hand, raised up defensively. She swung it, bringing it down on Wilson’s head once, twice, three times, and though it didn’t seem to be doing any real damage, it was hurting and distracting him enough to drive him into the courtyard.  
  
“ _Go away!_ ” She screamed furiously. “ _Go- **away!**_ ”  
  
Wilson raised his hand, catching the next swing and ripping the golf club from Diana’s hand. He grabbed her by the throat, lifting her into the air. Grayson jumped to his feet in a panic: It would take no effort at all for Wilson to break Diana’s neck.  
  
Grayson couldn’t find his gun, so he reluctantly went for the knife on his back, pulling it out smoothly and ramming it into Wilson’s back. The man roared, a sound that was grating and disturbing to the ear, and he dropped Diana to the ground. Grayson had jammed the knife in deeper than he thought he would, and Wilson spun around for a moment trying to shake it loose.  
  
Diana backed away, but in her panic she found herself trapped in the space between the orphanage front steps and the wall. With Wilson between them, Grayson struggled to find a way past him so that he could grab her, hoist her onto the steps and let her escape into the orphanage.  
  
“ _Galahad!_ ”  
  
To Grayson’s untold relief, Lafayette appeared from the orphanage’s side-gate, skidding to a stop when he saw Wilson. “Be careful!” Grayson warned. “He’s stronger and more resilient than he looks!”  
  
“What have you tried?”  
  
“ _Everything!_ ”  
  
Wilson, evidently resigning himself to being stuck with a knife, rounded on Grayson with renewed rage. He jumped forward, hitting a little short of his intended mark (presumably, Grayson’s throat) and lodged his teeth in Grayson’s side, where his ribs met his stomach. He cried out, falling back; Wilson’s jaw was impossibly strong, and Grayson knew that at least two of his ribs had broken under the pressure.  
  
“Gregory!”  
  
Wilson released Grayson, and turned around.  
  
Jennifer was standing in the yard, a lone figure in the dark. Where had Lafayette gone? Had he brought Diana inside? “Please,” she pled weakly as Wilson slunk forward, a low growl in his throat. “I know you miss Joshua, I know you’re sad, I know Wendy played with you so meanly… Please, please, don’t do this.”  
  
Wilson was undeterred, continuing his slow progression.  
  
Grayson tried to get up again, but this time he was out of luck: The broken mess of his ribs and stomach prevented him from rising, and the Blackwater could not heal him nearly quickly enough to intervene on Jennifer’s behalf. “He’s beyond reason!” Grayson bellowed. “ _Run_ , Jennifer!”  
  
But she didn’t run, whether it was from fear or not believing she could escape, he was unsure.  
  
“Gregory,” she begged, “Please don’t hurt me. You said you wouldn’t hurt me.”  
  
Wilson pressed on, unmoved.  
  
“Don’t you remember when you found me? When you brought me to your home?”  
  
Evidently he didn’t.  
  
“You put me in the basement and brought me food. You read to me.”  
  
Grayson finally spotted Lafayette on his knees by the front steps, frantically loading a pistol. “Lafayette!” Grayson barked.  
  
“Hold on!”  
  
“ _Lafayette_ _!_ ”  
  
“ _Hold on, Monsieur!_ ”  
  
“You said you wouldn’t hurt me, Gregory,” Jennifer whimpered as Gregory closed in, entirely unfazed by her pleas. “Gregory, _please!_ ”  
  
“Got it!” Lafayette sprung up, racing towards them.  
  
Gregory reared up, and Jennifer tripped and fell back into the mud.  
  
Lafayette aimed for the side of Wilson’s head and fired.  
  
 ** _BOOM!_**  
  
Lafayette was knocked onto his back with a shout.  
  
Wilson fell in the opposite direction, onto his side.  
  
Lafayette sat up; Wilson did not move.  
  
The Blackwater was just starting to work, so Grayson painfully dragged himself as far as he could across the yard, as close as he could get to Lafayette. By this point, it was obvious that Wilson wasn’t getting back up. “What… What…” Grayson coughed up blood, hastily wiping it from his lips. “What did you… do?”  
  
Lafayette’s hands were burned and cut; the pistol he had shot Wilson with was on the ground beside him, obviously damaged. “I lacked the precise ammunition for the pistol,” he coughed, grimacing in pain as his injured hands shook and twitched. “It was a tight fit, but it fired anyways, hence the fireworks. I suppose I should be fortunate that I didn’t lose any fingers, eh?”  
  
“ _How?_ ” Isabeau croaked. She was still on the steps, pale and clutching her shoulder as the bite wound (which was _much_ larger than Grayson had initially realized, it had to have crushed most of Isabeau’s shoulder).  
  
“I took a lucky guess,” Lafayette said humbly. “I thought, ‘if it is a ghost we are dealing with, then perhaps it isn’t as straightforward as the strength in our weapons’. I kept the gun recovered from Mr. Wilson’s body, and thought perhaps it might be more effective against his ghost than any other weapon.”  
  
A boom of thunder sounded overhead, followed by a flash of light.  
  
When it passed, Wilson’s body was gone.  
  
Well, not _gone:_ Rather, it was right where it should be, under a curtain with the other dead bodies. Grayson hadn’t had a chance to look before- had Wilson’s body stayed where it was, or had it somehow become reanimated? Was Clara’s body back in the Headmaster’s room now?  
  
Jennifer stood up, eyes fixated on the spot where Wilson’s body had been. Then she crawled into the space between the staircase and the wall, where Diana had retreated after Wilson had dropped her. A moment later the girls emerged, Diana pale and leaning heavily on Jennifer for support. “Are you alright?” Jennifer asked, looking amongst the Knights and obviously seeing their injuries.  
  
“We will be fine,” Lafayette assured. “We are a tough bunch, and we heal quickly.” He leaned back. “Sir Perceval! Sir Lucan! Are you alright?”  
  
Alastair’s voice replied: “We’ll be fine!”  
  
Sebastien’s voice added: “I am ready to be shot of this god-damned house!”  
  
“Aren’t we all?” Isabeau grunted.  
  
The girls sat down on the step beside Lafayette, at Isabeau’s feet. “What now?”  
  
“Well, _right_ now we wait for my ribs to set themselves to rights,” Grayson responded, healed just enough to haul himself a little closer to the stairs, enough so that he could lean against the foot of the staircase. It was raining steadily now, thunder rumbling above. “And then, once we can move, we will seek out the police- and our driver, who has either gotten himself terribly lost, or fallen victim to this place and its tricks.”  
  
“And us?” This was Diana, who seemed as done with the orphanage and the events of the night as Sebastien. “What about us?”  
  
Lafayette gently patted her hand, valiantly managing to avoid cringing as his damaged skin was aggravated further. “We will figure something out, _mon chérie._ All in good time.”  
  
[---]  
  
It took almost an hour for the Knights to heal up enough to move properly.  
  
Jennifer and Diana were either too traumatized to notice, or perhaps simply didn’t care, that their rescuers were healing from serious wounds at an unbelievable rate. Once they had, Grayson and Alastair broke the front doors off the hinges; Wilson had already done them some damage when he’d burst in earlier, so it was an easier task than it might have been otherwise. Only once the doors were physically incapable of shutting on them did everyone sit in the foyer to get out of the rain. For the time being, it was far too dark and messy to venture from the orphanage grounds.  
  
They used the time to catch one another up on the night’s events which, frankly, sounded like something out of a hallucination or fever dream.  
  
“Where did that boy, Joshua, go?” Isabeau asked, leaning against the wall near the open doors. “Did he disappear with Wilson?”  
  
“One minute he was there, the next he was gone,” Alastair said with a shrug. “I have no idea where he went, or if he’s still around.”  
  
Grayson put a finger to his lips, and then pointed to Jennifer and Diana. They were curled on the floor in a nest of pillows and blankets, seemingly asleep. Earlier, Lafayette had gamely volunteered to go to the dormitory upstairs to get them, oblivious and somewhat amused as to why his fellows were so reluctant to go anyplace with a functioning door. In any case, Grayson couldn’t be sure that they were completely asleep and unable to hear what was being said around them.  
  
“Hopefully he has found peace,” Lafayette said, following it up with barely-audible mumbling that might have been a prayer.  
  
Grayson wasn’t going to hold his breath.  
  
He eyed the two sleeping girls beside him and considered their futures. Grayson didn’t expect the others to disagree, but the girls could not stay in Cardington: Aside from the torture of being asked to keep on living in a house where their friends had been slaughtered in front of them, they had no headmaster and no other viable living situation in the short-term. It would not be unreasonable, he thought, to suggest that they return to London with the Knights. Perhaps instead of an orphanage, they could attend a Girls’ School in the city, where they could be checked on by the Knights, be reassured that they were being looked after, that they were safe.  
  
Safe from headmasters with roaming hands, safe from men who acted like dogs, and safe from vengeful ghosts that wished them ill.  
  
Grayson stiffened, a flash of something white catching his eye outside. He stared for a long moment, searching for the source, and then decided that it was probably just a bit of lightning, or a bit of reflected moonlight.  
  
But he did not relax until the first light of day came a few hours later, chasing away the last of the darkness.  
  
-End


End file.
